AMERICAN NOTE 



GENERAL CIRCULATION. 



BY CHARLES DICKENS 




PARIS : 
BAUDRY'S EUROPEAN LIBRARY, 

3, QTJAI MALAQUAIS, NEAR THE PONT DES ARTS, 

AND STASSIN AND XAVIER, 9, RUE DU COQ, NEAR THE LODVRE. 

JOLD ALSO BY AMYOT, ROE DE LA PAIX ; TRUCHY, BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS ; BR0CKHAU3 AND AYENAR1US, 
RUE RICHELIEU; LEOPOLD MICHELSEN, LEIPZIG ; AND BY ALL THE PRINCIPAL 
BOOKSELLERS ON THE CONTINENT. 



1842. 



P»S., 

£53 



10 
15 



/ 



I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
TO THOSE FRIENDS OF MINE IN AMERICA, 
WHO, 

GIVING ME A WELCOME 
MUST EVER GRATEFULLY AND PROUDLY REMEMBER : 
LEFT MY JUDGMENT FREE; 
AND WHO, 

LOVING THEIR COUNTRY, CAN BEAR THE TRUTH, 
WHEN IT IS TOLD GOOD HUMOU REDLY, 
AND LN A KIND SPIRIT. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER THE FIRST. 

Page 



Going away 3 

CHAPTER THE SECOND. 
The Passage out 12 

CHAPTER THE THIRD. 
Boston ' 31 

CHAPTER THE FOURTH. 
An American Railroad. Lowell and its Factory System 75 

CHAPTER THE FIFTH. 

Worcester. The Connecticut River. Hartford. New Haven. New Haven 

to New York 87 

CHAPTER THE SIXTH. 
New York 99 

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH. 
Philadelphia, and its Solitary Prison 121 

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH. 
Washington. The Legislature , and the President's House 141 



Mil 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER THE NINTH. 

Page 



A Night Steamer on the Potomac River. A Virginia Road , and a Black 
Driver. Richmond. Baltimore. The Harrisburgh Mail, and a Glimpse 
of the City. A Canal-Boat !6i 

CHAPTER THE TENTH. 

Some further Account of the Canal-Boat , its Domestic Economy, and its 
Passengers. Journey to Pittsburg across the Alleghany Mountains. 
Pittsburg ! . 183 

CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH. 

From Pittsburg to Cincinnati in a Western Steamboat. Cincinnati 197 

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH. 

From Cincinnati to Louisville in another Western Steamboat; and from 

Louisville to St. Louis in another. St. Louis 209 

CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH. 

A Jaunt to the Looking-glass Prairie and back 225 

CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH. 

Return to Cincinnati. A Stage-coach Ride from that City to Columbus, and 

thence to Sandusky. So, by Lake Erie, to the Falls of Niagara 237 

CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH. 

In Canada : Toronto ; Kingston; Montreal ; Quebec; St. John's. In the United 

States again ; Lebanon ; the Shaker Village ; and West Point 257 

CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH. 

The Passage Home 279 

CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH. 
Slavery 291 

CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH. 
Concluding Remarks 31 1 



GOING AWAY, 

AND THE PASSAGE OUT. 



i 



CHAPTER THE FIRST. 



GOING AWAY. 

I shall never forget the one-fourth serious and three-fourths 
comical astonishment, with which, on the morning of the third 
of January eightcen-hundred-and-forty-two, I opened the door 
of, and put my head into, a "state-room" on board the Bri- 
tannia steam-packet, twelve hundred Ions burden per register, 
bound for Halifax and Boston, and carrying Her Majesty's 
mails. 

That this state-room had been specially engaged for ' ' Charles 
Dickens, Esquire, and Lady," was rendered sufficiently clear 
even to my scared intellect by a very small manuscript, 
announcing the fact, which was pinned on a very flat quilt, 
covering a very thin mattress, spread like a surgical plaster on 
a most inaccessible shelf. But that this was the state-room 
concerning which Charles Dickens, Esquire, and Lady, had held 
daily and nightly conferences for at least four months preced- 
ing : that this could by any possibility be that small snug 
chamber of the imagination, which Charles Dickens, Esquire, 
with the spirit of prophecy strong upon him, had always fore- 
told would contain at least one little sofa, and which his lady, 
with a modest yet most magnificent sense of its limited di- 
mensions, had from the first opined would not hold more 
than two enormous portmanteaus in some odd corner out of 
sight (portmanteaus which could now no more be got in at 
the door, not to say stowed away, than a giraffe could be 
persuaded or forced into a flowerpot) : that this utterly imprac- 



GOING 



I i cable, thoroughly hopeless, and profoundly preposterous box, 
had the remotest reference to, or connection with, those chaste 
and pretty, not to say gorgeous little bowers, sketched by a 
masterly hand, in the highly varnished lithographic plan hang- 
ing up in the agent's counting-house in the city of London . 
that this room of state, in short, could be anything but a pleasant 
fiction and cheerful jest of the captain's, invented and put in 
practice for the better relish and enjoyment of the real state- 
room presently to be disclosed : — these were truths which I 
really could not, for the moment, bring my mind at all to bear 
upon or comprehend. And I sat down upon a kind of horsehair 
slab, or perch, of which there were two within; and looked, 
without any expression of countenance whatever, at some 
friends who had come on board with us, and who were crush- 
ing their faces into all manner of shapes by endeavouring to 
squeeze them through the small doorway. 

We had experienced a pretty smart shock before coming 
below, which, but that we were the most sanguine people 
living, might have prepared us for the worst. The imaginative 
artist to whom I have already made allusion, has depicted in 
the same great work, a chamber of almost interminable per- 
spective, furnished, as Mr. Robins would say, in a style of more 
than Eastern splendour, and filled (but not inconveniently so) 
with groups of ladies and gentlemen, in the very highest state 
of enjoyment and vivacity. Before descending into the bowels 
of the ship, we had passed from the deck into a long narrow 
apartment, not unlike a gigantic hearse with windows in the 
sides ; having at the upper end a melancholy stove, at which 
three or four chilly stewards were warming their hands ; while 
on either side, extending down its whole dreary length, was a 
long, long, table, over each of which a rack, fixed to the low 
roof, and stuck full of drinking-glasses and cruet-stands, hinted 
dismally at rolling seas and heavy weather. I had not at that 
time seen the ideal presentment of this chamber which has since 
gratified me so much, but I observed that one of our friends 
who had made the arrangements for our voyage, turned pale on 
entering, retreated on the friend behind him, smote his fore- 



GOING AWAY. 



5 



head involuntarily, and said, below his breath, u Impossible ! it 
cannot be!" or words to that effect. He recovered himself 
however by a great effort, and after a preparatory cough or 
tw o, cried, with a ghastly smile which is still before me, looking 
at the same time round the walls. "Ha! the breakfast-room, 
steward — eh?" We all foresaw what the answer must be : we 
knew the agony he suffered. He had often spoken of the sa 
loon; had taken in and lived upon the pictorial idea; had 
usually given us to understand, at home, that to form a just 
conception of it, it would be necessary to multiply the size and 
furniture of an ordinary drawing-room by seven, and then fall 
short of the reality. When the man in reply avowed the 
truth ; the blunt, remorseless, naked truth ; " This is the saloon, 
sir" — he actually reeled beneath the blow. 

In persons who were so soon to part, and interpose be- 
tween their else daily communication the formidable barrier of 
many thousand miles of stormy space, and who were for that 
reason anxious to cast no other cloud, not even the passing 
shadow of a moment's disappointment or discomfiture, upon 
the short interval of happy companionship that yet remained to 
them — in persons so situated, the natural transition from these 
first surprises was obviously into peals of hearty laughter; and 
I can report that I, for one, being still seated upon the slab or 
perch before-mentioned, roared outright until the vessel rang 
again. Thus, in less than two minutes after coming upon it for 
the first lime, we all by common consent agreed that this state- 
room was the pleasantest and most facetious and capital con- 
trivance possible; and that to have had it one inch larger, 
would have been quite a disagreeable and deplorable state of 
things. And with this; and with showing how, — by very 
nearly closing the door, and twining in and out like serpents, 
and by counting the little washing-slab as standing-room, — 
w e could manage to insinuate four people into it, all at one time ; 
and entreating each other to observe how very airy it was (in 
dock,, and how there was a beautiful port-hole which could be 
kept open all day (weather permitting), and how there was 
quite a large bull's-eye just over the looking-glass which would 



GOING aw ay. 

render shaving a perfectly easy and delightful process (when 
the ship didn't roll too much) ; we arrived, at last, at the una- 
nimous conclusion that it was rather spacious than otherwise : 
though 1 do verily believe that, deducting the two berths, one 
above the other, than which nothing smaller for sleeping in was 
ever made except coffins, it was no bigger than one of those 
hackney cabriolets which have the door behind, and shoot their 
fares out, like sacks of coals, upon the pavement. 

Having settled this point to the perfect satisfaction of all 
parties, concerned and unconcerned, we sat down round the 
fire in the ladies' cabin — just to try the effect. It was rather 
dark, certainly; but somebody said, u of course it would be 
light, at sea," a proposition to which we all assented ; echoing 
" of course, of course ; " though it would be exceedingly dif- 
ficult to say why we thought so. I remember, too, when we 
had discovered and exhausted another topic of consolation in the 
circumstance of this ladies' cabin adjoining our state-room, and 
the consequently immense feasibility of sitting there at all times 
and seasons, and had fallen into a momentary silence, leaning 
our faces on our hands and looking at the fire, one of our party 
said, with the solemn air of a man who had made a discovery, 
" What a relish mulled claret will have down here ! " which 
appeared to strike us all most forcibly ; as though there were 
something spicy and high-flavoured in cabins, which essentially 
improved that composition, and rendered it quite incapable of 
perfection anywhere else. 

There was a stewardess, too, actively engaged in producing 
clean sheets and tablecloths from the very entrails of the sofas, 
and from unexpected lockers, of such artful mechanism, that it 
made one's head ache to see them opened one after another, 
and rendered it quite a distracting circumstance to follow her 
proceedings, and to find that every nook and corner and indi- 
vidual piece of furniture was something else besides what it 
pretended to be, and was a mere trap and deception and place 
of secret stowage, whose ostensible purpose was its least useful 
one. 

God bless that stewardess for her piously fraudulent account 



AWAY. 



1 



of January voyages ! God bless her for her clear recollection 
of the companion passage of last year, when nobody wass ill, 
and ev erybody danced from morning to night, and it was " a 
run " of twelve days, and a piece of the purest frolic, and de- 
light; and jollity ! All happiness be with her for her bright 
face and her pleasant Scotch tongue, which had sounds of old 
Home in it for my fellow traveller ; and for her predictions of 
fair winds and fine weather (all wrong, or T shouldn't be half 
so fond f her) ; and for the ten thousand small fragments of 
genuine womanly tact, by which, without piecing them elabo- 
rately together, and patching them up into shape and form and 
case and pointed application, she nevertheless did plainly show 
that all young mothers on one side of the Atlantic were near 
and close at hand to their little children left upon the other ; 
and that what seemed to the uninitiated a serious journey, was, 
to those who where in the secret, a mere frolic, to be sung 
about and whistled at ! Light be her heart, and gay her merry 
eyes, for years ! 

The state-room had grown pretty fast ; but by this time it 
had expanded into something quite bulky, and almost boasted 
a bay-window to view the sea from. So we went upon deck 
agaiu in high spirits; and there, everything was in such a state 
of bustle and active preparation, that the blood quickened its 
pace, and whirled through one's veins on that clear frosty 
morning with involuntary mirthfulness. For every gallant 
ship was riding slowly up and down, and every little boat was 
plashing noisily in the water ; and knots of people stood upon 
the wharf, gazing with a kind of " dread delight" on the far- 
famed fast American steamer; and one party of men were 
" taking in the milk," or, in other words, getting the cow on 
board ; and another were filling the icehouses to the very throat 
with fresh provisions; with bulchers'meat and gardenstuff, pale 
sucking-pigs, calves' heads in scores, beef, veal, and pork, and 
poultry out of all proportion; and others were coiling ropes, 
and busy with oakum yarns ; and others were lowering heavy 
packages into the hold; and the purser's head was barely visible 
as it loomed in a state of exquisite perplexity from th midst 



8 



GOING VW W 



of a vast pile of passengers' luggage; and there scorned to be 
nothing going on anywhere, Or uppermost in the mind of any- 
body '. but preparations for Ibis mighty voyage. This, with the 
bright cold sun, the bracing air, the crisply-curling water, the 
thin white crust of morning ice upon the decks which crackled 
with a sharp and cheerful sound beneath the lightest tread, was 
irresistible. And when, again upon the shore, we turned and 
saw fron the vessel's mast her name signalled in flags of joyous 
colours, and fluttering by their side the beautiful American 
banner with its stars and stripes,— the long three thousand 
miles and more, and, longer still, the six whole months of ab- 
sence, so dwindled and faded, that the ship had gone out and 
come home again , and it was broad spring already in the Go- 
burg Dock at Liverpool. 

I have not inquired among my medical acquaintance, whe- 
ther Turtle, and cold Punch, with Hock, Champagne, and 
Claret, and all the slight et cetera usually included in an unli- 
mited order for a good dinner — especially when it is left to the 
liberal construction of my faultless friend, Mr. Radley, of the 
Adelphi Hotel — are peculiarly calculated to suffer a sea -change; 
or w hether a plain mutton-chop, and a glass or two of sherry, 
would be less likely of conversion into foreign and disconcert- 
ing material. My own opinion is, that whether one is discreet 
or indiscreet in these particulars, on the eve of a sea-voyage, 
is a matter of little consequence ; and that, to use a common 
phrase, " it comes to very much the same thing in the end." 
Be this as it may, I know that the dinner of that day was un- 
deniably perfect; that it comprehended all these items, and a 
great many more ; and that we all did ample justice to it. And 
I know too, that, bating a certain tacit avoidance of any allu- 
sion to to-morrow ; such as may be supposed to prevail between 
delicate-minded turnkeys, and a sensitive prisoner who is to be 
hanged next morning; we got on very well, and, all things 
considered, were merry enough. 

When the morning — the morning — came, and we met at 
breakfast, it was curious to see how 7 eager we all were to prevent 
a moment's pause in the conversation, and how astoundingly 



GOING AWAY, 



9 



gay everybody was : the forced spirits of each member of the 
little party having as much likeness to his natural mirth, as 
hot-house peas at five guineas the quart, resemble in flavour 
the growth of the dews, and air, and rain of Heaven. But as 
one o'clock, the hour for going aboard, drew T near, this volubi- 
lity dwindled away by little andlittle, despite the most persever- 
ing efforts to the contrary, until at last, the matter being now 
quite desperate, we threw off all disguise;, openly speculated 
upon where we should be this time to-morrow, this time next 
day, and so forth ; and entrusted a vast number of messages to 
those who intended returning to town that night, which were 
to be delivered at home and elsewhere without fail, within the 
very shortest possible space of time after the arrival of the 
railway train at Euston Square. And commissions and re- 
membrances do so crowd upon one at such a time^ that we 
were still busied with this employment when we found our- 
selves fused, as it were, into a dense conglomeration of pas- 
sengers and passengers' friends and passengers' luggage, all 
jumbled together on the deck of a small steamboat, and panting 
and snorting off to the packet, which had w orked out of dock 
yesterday afternoon and was now lying at her moorings in the 
river. 

And there she is ! all eyes are turned to w here she lies, dimly 
discernible through the gathering fog of the early winter 
afternoon ; every finger is pointed in the same direction; and 
murmurs of interest and admiration— as " How beautiful she 
looks!" " How trim she is!'— are heard on every side. 
Even the lazy gentleman with his hat on one side and his 
hands in his pockets, w ho has dispensed so much consolation 
by inquiring with a yawn of another gentleman whether he is 
" going across"— as if it were a ferry— even he condescends 
to look that way, and nod his head, as who should say " No 
mistake about that:" and not even the sage Lord Burleigh in 
his nod, included half so much as this lazy gentleman of might 
who has made the passage (as everybody on board has found 
out already ; it's impossible to say how) thirteen times without a 
single accident ! There is another passenger very much wrap- 



10 



GOING AWAY. 



ped-up, who has been frowned down by the rest, and morally 
trampled upon and crushed, for presuming to inquire with a 
timid interest how long it is since the poor President went 
down. He is standing close to the lazy gentleman, and says 
with a faint smile that he believes She is a very strong Ship : to 
which the lazy gentleman, looking first in his questioner's eye 
and then very hard in the wind's, answers unexpectedly and 
ominously, that She need be. Upon this the lazy gentleman 
instantly falls very low in the popular estimation, and the pas- 
sengers, with looks of defiance, whisper to each other that he is 
au ass, and an impostor, and clearly don't know anything at all 
about it. 

But we are made fast alongside the packet, whose huge red 
funnel is smoking bravely, giving rich promise of serious inten- 
tions. Packing-cases, portmanteaus, carpet-bags, and boxes, 
are already passed from hand to hand, and hauled on board 
with breathless rapidity. The officers, smartly dressed, are at 
the gangway handing the passengers up the side, and hurrying 
the men. In five minutes' time, the little steamer is utterly 
deserted, and the packet is beset and over-run by its late freight, 
who instantly pervade the whole ship, and are to be met with 
by the dozen in every nook and corner : swarming down below 
with their own baggage, and stumbling over other people's ; 
disposing themselves comfortably in wrong cabins, and creating 
a most horrible confusion by having to turn out again ; madly 
bent upon opening locked doors, and on forcing a passage into 
all kinds of out-of-the-way places where there is no thorough- 
fare j sending wild stewards, with eldn hair, to and fro upon 
the breezy decks on unintelligible errands, impossible of exe- 
cution : and in short, creating the most extraordinary and 
bewildering tumuld. In the midst of all this, the lazy gentle- 
man, wfce seems to have no luggage of any kind — not so much 
as a frie^J, even— -louuges up and down the hurricane-deck, 
coolly puffing a cigar; and, as this unconcerned demeanour 
again exalts him in the opinion of those who have leisure to 
observe his proceedings, every time he looks up at the masts 5 
or down at the decks, or over the side, they look there too, as 



GOING AWAY. 



wondering whether he sees anything wrong anywhere, and 
hoping that, in case he should, he will have the goodness to 
mention it. 

What have we here? The captain's boat! and yonder the 
captain himself. Now by all our hopes and wishes, the very 
man he ought to be ! A well-made, tight-built, dapper little 
fellow ; with a ruddy face, which is a letter of invitation to 
shake him by both hands at once ; and with a clear blue honest 
eye, that it does one good to see one's sparkling image in. 
" Ring the bell! " " Ding, ding, ding!" the very bell is in a 
hurry . i 1 Now for the shore — who's fur the shore ? " — " These 
gentlemen, I am sorry to say ." They are away, and never said, 
Good b'ye. Ah! now they wave it from the little boat. 
a Good b'ye ! Good b ye ! " Three cheers from them ; three 
more from us j three more from them : and they are gone. 

To and fro, to and fro, to and fro again a hundred times! 
This waiting for the latest mail-bags is worse than all. If we 
could have gone off in the midst of that last burst, we should 
have started triumphantly : but to lie here, two hours and more, 
in the damp fog, neither staying at home nor going abroad, is 
letting one gradually down into the very depths of dulness and 
low spirits- A speck in the mist, at last! That's something. 
It is the boat we wait fur! That's more to the purpose. The 
captain appears on the paddle-box with his speaking trumpet ; 
the officers take their stations ; all hands are on the alert ; the 
flagging hopes of the passengers revive ; the cooks pause in 
their savoury work, and look out with faces full of interest. 
The boat comes alongside ; the bags are dragged in anyhow, 
and flung down for the moment anywhere. Three cheers 
more : and as the first one rings upon our ears, the vessel 
thrubs like a strong giant that has just received the breath of 
life j the two great wheels turn fiercely round for the first 
time ; and the nublc ship, with wind and tide astern, breaks 
proudly through the lashed and foaming water. 



CHAPTER THE SECOND. 



THE PASSAGE OUT. 

We all dined together that day; and a rather formidable 
party we were : no fewer than eighty-six strong. The vessel 
being pretty deep in the water, with all her coals on board and 
so many passengers, and the weather being calm and quiet, 
there was but little motion ; so that before the dinner was half 
over, even those passengers who were most distrustful of 
themselves plucked up amazingly ; and those who in the morn- 
ing had returned to the universal question, " Are you a good 
sailor?" a very decided negative, now either parried the inquiry 
with the evasive reply, u Oh ! I suppose I'm no worse than 
anybody else; " or, reckless of all moral obligations, answered 
boldly, " Yes : " and with some irritation too, as though they 
would add, " I should like to know what you see in me, sir, 
particularly, to justify suspicion ! " 

Notwithstanding this high tone of courage and confidence, I 
could not but observe that very few remained long over their 
wine ; and that everybody had an unusual love of the open air ; 
and that the favourite and most coveted seats were invariably 
those nearest to the door. The tea-table, too, was by no means 
as well attended as the dinner-table ; and there was less whist- 
playing than might have been expected. Still, with the excep- 
tion of one lady, who had retired with some precipitation at 
dinner-time, immediately alter being assisted to the finest cut of 
a very yellow boiled leg of mutton with very green capers, 
theie were no invalids as yet ; and walking, and smoking, and 



THE PASSAGE OIT. 



13 



drinking of brandy-and-water (but always in the open air), 
went on with unabated spirit, until eleven o'clock or there- 
abouts, when " turning in" — no sailor of seven hours' expe- 
rience talks of going to bed— became the order of the night. 
The perpetual tramp of boot-heels on the decks gave place to a 
heavy silence, and the whole human freight was stowed away 
below, excepting a very few stragglers, like myself, who were 
probably, like me, afraid to go there. 

To one unaccustomed to such scenes, this is a very striking 
time on shipboard. Afterwards, and when its novelty had long 
worn off, it never ceased to have a peculiar interest and charm 
for me. The gloom through which the great black mass holds 
its direct and certain course ; the rushing water, plainly heard, 
but dimly seen; the broad, white, glistening track, that follows 
in the vessel's wake ; the men on the look-out forward, who 
would be scarcely visible against the dark sky, but for their 
blotting out some score of glistening stars; the helmsman at the 
wheel, with the illuminated card before him, shining, a speck 
of light amidst the darkness, like something sentient and of 
Divine intelligence ; the melancholy sighing of the wind through 
block, and rope, and chain ; the gleaming forth of light from 
every crevice, nook, and tiny piece of glass about the decks, as 
though the ship were filled with fire in hiding, ready to burst 
through any outlet, wild with its resistless power of death and 
ruin. At first, too, and even when the hour, and all the objects 
it exalts, have come to be familiar, it is difficult, alone and 
thoughtful, to hold them to their proper shapes and forms. 
They change with the wandering fancy ; assume the semblance 
of things left far away ; put on the well-remembered aspect of 
favourite places dearly loved; and even people them with 
shadows. Streets, houses, rooms ; figures so like their usual 
occupants, that they have startled me by their reality, which 
far exceeded, as it seemed to me, all power of mine to conjure 
up the absent; have, many and many a time, at such an hour, 
grown suddenly out of objects with whose real look, and use, 
and purpose, 1 was as well acquainted as with my own two 
hands. 



MIL PASSAGE OUT. 



My own two hands, and feet likewise, being very cold, how 
ever, on this particular occasion, I crept below at midnight. 
It was not exactly comfortable below. It was decidedly close j 
and it was impossible to be unconscious of the presence of that 
extraordinary compound of strange smells, which is to be found 
nowhere but on board ship, and which is such a subtle perfume 
that it seems to enter at every pore of the skin, and whisper of 
the hold. Two passengers' wives (one of them my own) lay 
already in silent agonies on the sofa ; and one lady's maid {my 
lady's) was a mere bundle on the floor, execrating her destiny, 
and pounding her curl-papers among the stray boxes. Every- 
thing sloped the wrong way : which in itself was an aggravation 
scarcely to be borne. I had left the door open, a moment be- 
fore, in the bosom of a gentle declivity, and, when I turned to 
shut it, it was on the summit of a lofty eminence. Now every 
plank and timber creaked, as if the ship were made of wicker- 
work; and now crackled, like an enormous fire of the driest 
possible twigs. There was nothing for it but bed ; so I went 
to bed. 

It was pretty much the same for the next two days, with a 
tolerably fair wind and dry weather. I read in bed (but to this 
hour I don't know what) a good deal ; and reeled on deck a 
little ; drank cold brandy-and-water with an unspeakable dis- 
gust, andale hard biscuit perseveringly : not ill, outgoing to be. 

It is the third morning. I am awakened out of my sleep by 
a dismal shriek from my wife, who demands to know whether 
there's any danger. I rouse myself, and look out of bed. 
The water-jug is plunging and leaping like a lively dolphin; 
all the smaller articles are afloat, except my shoes, which are 
stranded on a carpet-bag, high and dry like a couple of coal- 
barges. Suddenly I see them spring into the air, and behold 
the looking-glass, which is nailed to the wall, sticking fast 
upon the ceiling. At the same time the door entirely dis- 
appears, and a new one is opened in the floor. Then I begin 
to comprehend that the state-room is standing on its head. 

Before it is possible to make any arrangement at all compa- 
tible with this novel state of things, the ship rights. Before 



THE PASSAGE OUT. 



15 



one can say, "Thank Heaven! "she wrongs again. Before 
one can cry she is wrong, she seems to have started forward, 
and to be a creature actively running of its own accord, with 
broken knees and failing legs, through every variety of hole 
and pitfall, and stumbling constantly. Before one can so much 
as wonder, she takes a high leap into the air. Before she has well 
done that, she takes a deep dive in to the water. Before she 
has gained the surface, she throws a summerset. The instant 
she is on her legs, she rushes backward. And so she goes on 
staggering, heaving, wrestling, leaping, diving, jumping, 
pitching, throbbing, rolling, and rocking : and going through 
all these movements, sometimes by turns, and sometimes all 
together : until one feels disposed to roar for mercy. 

A steward passes. u Steward!" " Sir?" " What is the mat- 
ter? what do you call this?" "Rather a heavy sea on, sir, 
and a head-wind." 

A head-wind: Imagine a human face upon the vessels 
prow, w ith fifteen thousand Sampsons in one bent upon driv- 
ing her back, and hitting her exactly between the eyes whenever 
she attempts to advance an inch. Imagine the ship herself, 
with every pulse and artery of her huge body swoln and burst- 
ing under this mal-treatment , sworn to go on or die. Imagine 
the wind howling, the sea roaring, the rain beating : all in 
furious array against her. Picture the sky both dark and 
wild, and the clouds, in fearful sympathy w ith the waves, mak- 
ing another ocean in the air. Add to all this, the clattering 
on deck and down below ; the tread of hurried feet ; the loud 
hoarse shouts of seamen ; the gurgling in and out of water 
through the scuppers ; with, every now and then, the striking 
of a heavy sea upon the planks above, with the deep, dead, 
heavy sound of thunder heard within a vault ; — and there 
is the head-wind of that January morning. 

I say nothing of what may be called the domestic noises of 
the ship such as the breaking of glass and crockery , the 
tumbling down of stewards, the gambols, overhead, of loose 
casks and truant dozens of bottled porter, and the very remark- 
able and far from exhilarating sounds raised in their various 



If. 



THE PASSAGE OUT. 



state-rooms by the seventy passengers who were too ill to get 
up to breakfast. I say nothing of them : for although I lay 
listening to this concert for three or four days, I don't think 
I heard it for more than a quarter of a minute, at the expira- 
tion of which term, I lay down again, excessively sea-sick. 

Not sea sick, be it understood, in the ordinary acceptation 
of the term : I wish I had been : but in a form which I have 
never seen or hear described , tough 1 have no doubt it 
is very common. I lay there, all the day long, quite coolly and 
contentedly ; with no sense of weariness, with no desire to get 
up, or get better, or take the air ; with no curiosity, or care, 
or regret, of any sort or degree, saving that I think I can 
remember, in this universal indifference, having a kind of 
l az y j°y — of fiendish delight, if anything so lethargic can 
be dignified with the title — in the fact of my wife being too ill 
to talk to me. If I may be allowed to illustrate my state of 
mind by such an example, I should say that I was exactly in 
the condition of the elder Mr. Willet, afier the incursion of 
the rioters into his bar at Chigwell. Nothing would have sur- 
prised me. If, in the momentary illumination of any ray of 
intelligence thatmay have come upon me in the way of thoughts 
of Home, a goblin postman, with a scarlet coat and bell, had 
come into that little kennel before me, broad awake in broad 
day, and, apologising for being damp through walking in the 
sea, had handed me a letter, directed to myself in familiar 
characters, I am certain I should not have felt one atom of 
astonishment. I should have been perfectly satisfied. If Nep- 
tune himself had walked in, with a toasted shark on his tri- 
dent, I should have looked upon the event as one of the very 
commonest everyday occurrences. 

Once — once— I found myself on deck. I don't know how I 
got there, or what possessed me to go there, but there I was ; 
and completely dressed too, with a huge pea-coat on, and a pair 
of boots such as no weak man in his senses could ever have got 
into. I found myself standing, when a gleam of consciousness 
came upon me, holding on to something. I don't know what. 
I think it was the boatswain : or it may have been the pump : 



THE PASSAGE OUT. 



17 



or possibly the cow. I can't say how long I bad been there; whether 
a day or a minute. I recollect trying to think about something 
(about anything in the whole wide world, I watnot particular) 
without the smallest effect. I could not even make out which 
was the sea, and which the sky; for the horizon seemed drunk, 
and was flying wildiy about , in all directions. Even in that 
incapable state, however, I recognised the lazy gentleman stand- 
ing before me : nautically clad in a suit of shaggy blue, with 
an oilskin hat. But I was too imbecile, although I knew it to be 
he, to separate him from his dtess ; and tried to call him, I 
remember, Pilot. After another interval of total unconscious- 
ness, I found he had gone, and recognised another figure in its 
place. It seemed to wave and fluctuate before me as though I 
saw it reflected in an unsteady looking-glass ; but I knew it for 
the captain ; and such was the cheerful influence of his face, 
that I tried to smile: yes, even then I tried to smile. I saw by 
his gestures that he addressed me ; but it was a longtime before 
I could make out that he remonstrated against my standing up 
to my knees in water — as I was ; of course I don't know why. 
I tried to thank him, but couldn't. I could only point to my boots 
— or wherever I supposed my boots to be — and say ina plain- 
tive voice, " Cork soles :" at the same time endeavouring, I 
am told, to sit down in the pool. Finding that I was quite 
insensible, and for the time a maniac, he humanely conducted 
me below. 

There I remained until I got better = suffering , whenever I 
was recommended to eat any thing, an amount of anguish only- 
second to that which is said to be endured by the apparently 
drowned, in the process of restoration to life. One gentleman 
on board had a letter of introduction to me from a mutual friend 
in London. He sent it below with his card, on the morning of 
the head- wind ; and I was long troubled with the idea that he 
might be up, and well, and a hundred times a day expecting me 
to call upon him in the saloon. I imagined him one of those 
cast-iron images — I will not call them men — who ask, with red 
faces and lusty voices, what sea-sickness means, and whether it 
really is as bad as it is represented lobe. This was very tortur- 

2 



18 



THE PASSAGE OUT. 



ing indeed ; and I don't think I ever felt such perfect graliGca- 
tion and gratitude of heart, as I did when I heard from the ship's 
doctor that he had been obliged to put a large mustard poultice 
on this very gentleman's stomach. I date my recovery from 
the receipt of that intelligence. 

It w&s materially assisted though, I have no doubt, by aheavy 
gale of wind, which came slowly up at sunset, when we were 
about ten days out, and raged with gradually increasing fury 
until morning, saving that it lulled for an hour a little before 
midnight. There was something in the unnatural reposeof that 
hour, and in the after gathering of the storm, so inconceivably 
awful and tremendous, that its bursting into full violence was 
almost a relief. 

The labouring of the ship in the troubled sea on this night 
I shall never forget. " Will it ever be worse than this?" was 
a question I had often heard asked, when everything was sliding 
and bumping about, and when it certainly did seem diflicult to 
comprehend the possibility of anything afloat being more dis- 
turbed, without toppling over and going down. But what the 
agitation of a steam-vessel is, on a bad winter's night in the 
wild Atlantic, it is impossible for the most vivid imagination 
to conceive. To say that she is flung down on her side in the 
waves, with her masts dipping into them, and that, springing 
up again, she rolls over on the other side, until a heavy sea 
strikes her with the noise of a hundred great guns, and hurls 
her back — that she stops, and staggers, and shivers, as though 
stunned, and then, with a violent throbbing at her heart, darts 
onward like a monster goaded into madness, to be beaten down, 
and battered, and crushed, and leaped on by the angry sea — 
that thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, and wind, are all in 
fierce contention for the mastery — that every plank has its 
groan, every nail its shriek, and every drop of water in the 
great ocean its howling voice — is nothing. To say that all is 
grand, and all appalling and horrible in the last degree, is 
nothing. Words cannot express it. Thoughts cannot convey 
it. Only a dream can call it up again, in all its fury, rage and 
passion. 



THE PASSAGE OUT. 



And yet, in the very midst of these terrors, I was placed in 
a situation so exquisitely ridiculous, that even then I had as 
strong a sense of its absurdity as I have now : and could no 
more help laughing than I can at any other comical incident, 
happening under circumstances the most favourable to its 
enjoyment. About midnight we shipped a sea, which forced 
its way through the skylights, burst open the doors above, and 
came raging and roaring down into the ladies' cabin, to the 
unspeakable consternation of my wife and a little Scotch lady 
— who, by the way, had previously sent a message to the captain 
by the stewardess, requesting him, with her compliments, to 
have a steel conductor immediately attached to the top of every 
mast, and to the chimney, in order that the ship might not be 
struck by lightning. They, and the handmaid before men- 
tioned, being in such ccstacies of fear that I scarcely knew what 
to do with them, I naturally bethought myself of some resto- 
rative or comfortable cordial ; and nothing better occurring to 
me, at the moment, than hot brandy -and- water, I procured a 
tumbler-full without delay. It being impossible to stand or 
sit without holding on, they were all heaped together in one 
corner of a long sofa — a fixture extending entirely across the 
cabin — where they clung to each other in momentary expec- 
tation of being drowned. When I approached this place with 
my specific, and was about to administer it, with many con- 
solatory expressions, to the nearest sufferer, what was my 
dismay to see them all roll slowly down to the other end ! And 
when I staggered to that end, and held out the glass once more, 
how immensely baffled were my good intentions by the ship 
giving another lurch, and their all rolling back again! I sup- 
pose I dodged them up and down this sofa, for at least a quarter 
of an hour, without reaching them once ; and by the time I did 
catch them, the brandy-and-water was diminished, by constant 
spilling, to a tea-spoonful. To complete the group, it is neces- 
sary to recognise in this disconcerted dodger, a very pale 
individual, who had shaved his beard and brushed his hair, 
last, at Liverpool : and whose only articles of dress (linen not 
included ) were a pair of dreadnought trousers ; a blue jacket, 



THE PASSAGE Oil*. 



formerly admired upon the Thames at Richmond j no stockings ; 
and one slipper. 

Of the outrageous antics performed hy that ship next morn- 
ing: which made bed a practical joke, and gelling op, by any 
process short of falling out, an impossibility ; I say nothing. 
But anything like the utter dreariness and desolation that met 
my eyes when I, literally, fi tumbled up" on deck at noon, 
I never saw. Ocean and sky vere all of one dull, heavy, 
uniform, lead colour. There was no extent of prospect even 
over the dreary waste that lay around us, for the sea ran high, 
and the horizon encompassed us like a large black hoop. 
Viewed from the air, or some tall bluff on shore, it would have 
been imposing and stupendous no doubt ; but seen from the 
wet and rolling decks, it only impressed one giddily and pain- 
fully. In the gale of last night the life-boat had been crushed 
by one blow of the sea like a walnut-shell; and there it hung 
dangling in the air a mere faggot of crazy boards. The 
planking of the paddle-boxes had been lorn sheer away. 
The wheels were exposed and bare ; and they whirled and 
dashed their spray about the decks at random. Chimney, white 
with crusted salt; topmasts struck; stormsails set; rigging all 
knotted, tangled, wet, and drooping : a gloomier picture it 
would be hard to look upon. 

I was now comfortably established by courtesy in the ladies' 
cabin, where , besides ourselves, there were only four other 
passengers. First, the little Scotch lady before-mentioned , on 
her way to join her husband at New York , who had settled 
there three years before. Secondly and thirdly, an honest 
young Yorkshireman , connected with some American house; 
domiciled in that same city , and carrying thither his beautiful 
young wife to whom he had been married but a fortnight , and 
w ho was the fairest specimen of a comely English country girl 
I have ever seen. Fourthly, fifthly , and lastly , another couple : 
newly-married too, if one might judge from the endearments 
they frequently interchanged : of whom I know no more than 
that they were rather a mysterious , run-away kind of couple ; 
that the lady had great personal attractions also; and that the 



THE PASSAGE OUT. 



n 



gentleman carried more guns with him than Robinson Crusoe, 
wore a shooting-coat, and had two great dugs on board. On 
further consideration, I remember that he tried hot roast pig 
and bottled ale as a cure for seasickness ; and that he took these 
remedies (usually in bed) day after day , with astonishing per- 
severance. I may add, for the information of the curious, 
that they decidedly failed. 

The weather continuing obstinately and almost unprecc- 
denledly bad, we usually straggled into this cabin, more or 
less faint and miserable, about an hour before noon, and lay 
down on the sofas to recover ; during which interval , the 
captain would look in to communicate the state of the wind, 
the moral certainty of its changing to-morrow (the weather is 
always going to improve to-morrow , at sea), the vessel's rate 
of sailing, and so forth. Observations there were none to tell 
us of , for there was no sun to take them by. But a description 
of one day will serve for all the rest. Here it is. 

The captain being gone, we compose ourselves to read, if 
the place be light enough ; and if not, we doze and talk alter- 
nately. At one, a bell rings, and the stewardess comes down 
with a steaming dish of baked potatoes, and another of roasted 
apples; and plates of pig's face, cold ham, salt beef; or per- 
haps a smoking mess of rare hot collops. We fall to upon these 
dainties ; eat as much as we can (we have great appetites now) ; 
and are as long as possible about it. If the fire will burn (it 
will sometimes) we are pretty cheerful. If it won't, we all 
remark to each other that it's very cold , rub our hands , cover 
ourselves with coats and cloaks, and lie down again to doze, 
talk, and read (provided as aforesaid], until dinner-time. At 
five, another bell rings, and the stewardess reappears with 
another dish of potatoes — boiled , this time— and store of hot 
meat of various kinds: not forgetting the roast pig, to be 
taken medicinally. We sit down at table again (ra'hcr more 
cheerfully than before) ; prolong the meal with a rather mouldy 
dessert of apples, grapes , and oranges ; and drink our wine 
and brandy-and-water. The bottles and glasses arc still upon 
the table , and the oranges and so forth are rolling about ac-» 



THE PASSAGE OUT. 



cording to their fancy and the ship's way, when the doctor 
comes down , by special nightly invitation , to join our evening 
rubber : immediately on whose arrival we make a party at 
whist , and as it is a rough night aud the cards will not lie on 
the cloth, we put the tricks in our pockets as we take them. 
At whist we remain with exemplary gravity (deducting a short 
time for tea and loasO until eleven o'clock , or thereabouts ; 
when the captain comes down again , in a sou'-wester hat tied 
under his chin , and a pilot-coat : making the ground wet where 
he stands. By this lime the card-playing is over , and the 
bottles and glasses arc again upon the table j and after an hour's 
pleasant conversation about the ship, the passengers, and 
things in general , the captain (who never goes to bed, and is 
never out of humour) turns up his coat collar for the deck 
again ; shakes hands all round ; and goes laughing out into the 
weather as merrily as to a birth -day party. 

As to daily news, there is no dearth of that commodity. 
This passenger is reported to have lost fourteen pounds at Vingt- 
et-un in the saloon yesterday ; and that passenger drinks his 
bottle of champagne every day, and how he does it (being only 
a clerk), nobody knows. The head engineer has distinctly said 
that there newer was such times — meaning weather — and four 
good hands are ill. and have given in, dead beat. Several berths 
are full of water, and all the cabins are leaky. The ship's cook, 
secretly swigging damaged whiskey, has been found drunk; 
and has been played upon by the Gee-engine until quite sober. 
All the stewards have fallen down stairs at various dinner- 
limes, and go about with plasters in various places. The baker 
is ill, and so is the pastry-cook. A new T man, horribly indis- 
posed, has been required to fill the place of the latter officer ; 
and has been propped and jammed up with empty casks in a 
little house upon deck, and commanded to roll out pie-crust, 
which he protests (being highly bilious) it is death to him to look 
at. News ! A dozen murders on shore would lack the interest 
of these slight incidents at sea. 

Divided between our rubber and such topics as these, we 
were running (as we thought) into Halifax Harbour, on the 



THE PASSAGE OUT. 



fifteenth night, w ith little wind and a bright moon — indeed, we 
had made the Light at its outer entrance, and put the pilot in 
charge — when suddenly the ship struck upon a bank of mud. 
An immediate rush on deck took place of course ; the sides were 
crowded in an instant ; and for a few minutes we were in as 
lively a state of confusion as the greatest lover of disorder would 
desire to see. The passengers, and guns, and water-casks, and 
other heavy matters, being all huddled together aft, however, 
to lighten her in the head, she was soon got off j and after 
some driving on towards an uncomfortable line of objects 
(whose vicinity had been announced very early in the disaster 
by a loud cry of "Breakers a-head!") and much backing of 
paddles, and heaving of the lead into a constantly decreasing 
depth of water, we dropped anchor in a strange outlandish- 
looking nook which nobody on board could recognise, although 
there was land all about us, and so close that we could plainly 
see the waving brandies of the trees. 

It was strange enough, in the silence of midnight, and the 
dead stillness that seemed to be created by the sudden and unex- 
pected stoppage of the engine which had been clanking and 
blasting in our ears incessantly for so many days, to watch the 
look of blank astonishment expressed in every face: beginning 
with the officers, tracing it through all the passengers, and des- 
cending to the very stokers and furnace-men, who emerged 
from below, one by one, and clustered together in a smoky 
group about the hatchway of the engine-room, comparing notes 
in whispers. After throwing up a few rockets and firing sig- 
nal-guns in the hope of being hailed from the land, or at least 
of seeing a light— but without any other sight or sound pre- 
senting itself— it was determined to send a boat on shore. It 
was amusing to observe how very kind some of the passengers 
were, in volunteering to go ashore in this same boat : for the 
general good, of course : not by any means because they 
thought the ship in an unsafe position, or contemplated the pos- 
sibility of her heeling over in case the tide were running out. 
Nor was it less amusing to remark how desperately unpopular 
the poor pilot became in one short minute. He had had his 



n 



THE PASSAGE OUT. 



passage out from Liverpool, and during the whole voyage had 
been quite a notorious character; as a teller of anecdotes and 
cracker of jokes. Yet here were the very men who had laughed 
the loudest at his jests, now flourishing their Osts in his face, 
loading him with imprecations, and defying him to his tcelhas 
a villain ! 

The boat soon shoved off, with a lantern and sundry blue 
lights on board ; and in less than an hour returned ; the officer 
in command bringing with him a tolerably tall young tree, 
•which he had plucked up by the roots, to satisfy certain dis- 
trustful passengers whose minds misgave them that they were 
to be imposed upon and shipwrecked, and who would on no 
other terms believe that he had been ashore, or had done any- 
thing but fraudulently row a little way into the mist, specially 
to deceive them, and compass their deaths. Our captain had 
foreseen from the first that we must be in a place called the 
Eastern Passage ; and so we were. It was about the last place 
in the world in which we had any business or reason to be, but 
a sudden fog, and some error on the pilot's part, were the 
cause. We were surrounded by banks, and rocks, and shoals 
of all kinds, but had happily drifted, it seemed, upon the only 
safe speck that was to be found thereabouts. Eased by this re- 
port, and by the assurance that the tide w r as past the ebb, we 
turned in at three o'clock in the morning. 

I was dressing about half-past nine next day, when the noise 
above hurried me on deck. When I had left it over-night, it 
was dark, foggy, and damp, and there were bleak hills all 
round us. Now, we were gliding down a smooth, broad 
stream, at the rale of eleven miles an hour : our colours flying 
gaily ; our crew rigged out in their smartest clothes ; our officers 
in uniform again ; the sun shining as on a brilliant April day 
in England , the land stretched out on either side, streaked with 
light patches of snow; white wooden houses; people at their 
doors; telegraphs working; flags hoisted; wharfs appearing; 
ships; quays crowded with people; distant noises ; shouts ; men 
and boys running down steep places towards the pier : all more 
bright and gay and fresh to our unused eyes than words can 



THE PASSAGE OUT. 



25 



paiut them. We eatne to a wharf, paved with uplifted faces ; 
got alongside, and were made fast, after some shouting and 
straining of cables: darted, a score of us, along the gangway, 
almost as soon as it was thrust out to meet us, and before it had 
reached the ship — and leaped upon the firm glad earth again ! 

I suppose this Halifax would have appeared an Elysium, 
though it had been a curiosity of ugly dulness. But I carried 
away w ith me a most pleasant impression of the town and its 
inhabitants, and have preserved it to this hour. Nor was it 
without regret that T came home, without having found an op- 
portunity of returning thither, and once more shaking hands 
with the friends I made that day. 

It happened to be the opening of the Legislative Council and 
General Assembly, at which ceremonial the forms observed on 
the commencement of a new Session of Parliament in England 
were so closely copied, and so gravely presented on a small 
scale, that it was like looking at Westminster through the 
wrong end of a telescope. The governor, as her Majesty's re- 
presentative, delivered what may be called the Speech from 
the Throne. He said what he had to say manfully and well. 
The military band outside thebuiding struck up "God Save the 
Queen"' with great vigour before his Excellency had quite 
finished ; the people shouted ; the in's rubbed their hands ; the 
out's shook their heads ; the Government party said there never 
was such a good speech ; the opposition declared there never 
was such a bad one ; the Speaker and members of the House of 
Assembly w ithdrew from the bar to say a great deal among 
themselves and do a little : and, in short, everything went on, 
and promised to go on, just as it does at home upon the like 
occasions. 

The town is built on the side of a hill, the highest point being 
commanded by a strong fortress, not yet quite finished. Seve- 
ral streets of good breadth and appearance extend from its 
summit to the water-side, and are intersected by cross streets 
running parallel with the river. The houses are chiefly of 
wood. The market is abundantly supplied ; and provisions 
are exceedingly cheap. The weather being unusually mild 



THE PASSAGE OUT. 



at that time for the season of the year, there was no sleighing ; 
but there were plenty of those vehicles in yards and bye-places, 
and some of them, from the gorgeous quality of their decora- 
tions, might have " gone on" without alteration as triumphal 
cars in a melo-drama at Astley's. The day was uncommonly 
fine; the air bracing and healthful; the whole aspect of the 
town cheerful, thriving, and industrious. 

We lay there seven hours, to deliver and exchange the mails. 
At length, having collected all our bags and all our passengers 
(including two or three choice spirits, w r ho, having indulged 
too freely in oysters and champagne, were found lying insen- 
sible on their backs in unfrequented streets), the engines were 
again put in motion, and we stood off for Boston. 

Encountering squally whealher again in the Bay of Fundy,w r e 
tumbled and rolled about as usual all that night and all next 
day. On the next afternoon, that is to say, on Saturday, the 
twenty-second of January, an American pilot-boat came along- 
side, and soon afterwards the Britannia steam-packet, from Li- 
verpool, eighteen days out, was telegraphed at Boston. 

The indescribable interest with which I strained my eyes, as 
the first patches of American soil peeped like molehills from the 
green sea, and followed them, as they swelled, by slow and 
almost imperceptible degrees, into a continuous line of coast, 
can hardly be exaggerated. A sharp keen wind blew dead 
against us; a hard frost prevailed on shore; and the cold w r as 
most severe. Yet the air w 7 as so intensely clear, and dry, and 
bright, that the temperature w r as not only endurable, but 
delicious. 

Howl remained on deck, staring about me until we came 
alongside the dock, and how, though I had had as many eyes 
as Argus, I should have had them all wide open, and all cm- 
ployed on new objects— are topics which I will not prolong this 
chapter to discuss. Neither will I more than hint at my fo- 
reigner-like mistake, in supposing that a party of most active 
persons, who scrambled on board at the peril of their lives as 
w e approached the wharf, were newsmen, answering to that 
industrious class at home; whereas, despite the leathern wallets 



THE PASSAGE OUT. 



27 



of news slung about the necks of some, and the broad sheets 
in the hands of all, they were Editors, who boarded ships in 
person (as one gentleman in a worsted comforter informed me), 
" because they liked the excitement of it." Suffice it in this 
place to say, that one of these invaders, with a ready courtesy 
for which I thank him here most gratefully, went on before to 
order rooms at the hotel ; and that when I followed, as I soon 
did, I found myself rolling through the long passages with an 
involuntary imitation of the gait of Mr. T. P. Cooke, in a new 
nautical melodrama. 

u Dinner, if you please," said I to the waiter. 

" When?" said the waiter. 

" As quick as possible," said I. 

a Right away?" said the waiter. 

After a moment's hesitation, I answered, " No," at hazard. 

" Not right away ? " cried the w 7 aiter with an amount of sur- 
prise that made me start. 

I looked at him doubtfully, and returned, u No; I would 
rather have it in this private room. I like it very much." 

At this, I really thought the waiter must have gone out of his 
mind : as I believe he would have done, but for the interposi- 
tion of another man who whispered in his ear, " Directly." 

" Well ! and that's a fact! " said the waiter, looking helplessly 
at me : " Right away." 

I saw now that " Right away" and " Directly" w T ere one 
and the same thing. So I reversed my previous answer, and sat 
down to dinner in ten minutes afterwards ; and a capital dinner 
it was. 

The hotel (a very excellent one), is called the Tremont 
House. It has more galleries, colonnades, piazzas, and pas- 
sages than I can remember, or the reader would believe ; and is 
some trifle smaller than Bedford Square. 



BOSTON. 



CHAPTER THE THIRD. 



BOSTON. 

In all the public esfablishmcnts of America, Ihc utmost cour- 
tesy prevails. Most of our Departments are susceptible of con- 
siderable improvement in this respect, but the Custom-house 
above all others would do well to take example from (he United 
States, and render itself somewhat less odious and offensive to 
foreigners. The servile rapacity of the French officials is suffi- 
ciently contemptible; but there is a surly boorish incivility 
about our men , alike disgusting to all persons who fall into 
their hands, and discreditable to the nation that keeps such 
ill-conditioned curs snarling about its gales. 

When I landed in America, I could not help being strongly 
impressed with the contrast their Custom-house presented, and 
the attention, politeness, and good humour with which its offi- 
cers discharged their duty. 

As we did not land at Boston, in consequence of some deten- 
tion at the wharf, until after dark, I received my first impres- 
sions of ihe city in walking down to the Custom-house on the 
morning after our arrival, which was Sunday. I am afraid to 
say, by the way, how many offers of pews and seats in church 
for that morning were made to us, by formal note of invitation, 
before wchad half finished our first dinner in America; but if 
I may be allowed to make a moderate guess, without going 
into nicer calculation, I should say that at least as many sittings 
were proffered us, as would have accommodated a score or two 



32 



BOSTON. 



of grown-up families. The number of creeds and forms of re- 
ligion to which the pleasure of our company was requested, was 
in very fair proportion. 

Not being able,, in the absence of any change of clothes, to go 
to church that day, we were compelled to decline these kind- 
nesses, one and all; and I was reluctantly obliged to forego the 
delight of hearing Dr. Ghanning, who happened to preach that 
morning for the first time in a very long interval. 1 mention 
the name of this distinguished and accomplished man (with 
whom I soon afterwards had the pleasure of becoming person- 
ally acquainted), that I may have the gratification of record- 
ing my humble tribute of admiration and respect for his high 
abilities and character ; and for the bold philanthropy with which 
he has ever opposed himself to that most hideous blot and foul 
disgrace— Slavery. 

To return to Boston. When I got into the streets upon this 
Sunday morning, the air was so clear, the houses were so bright 
and gay ; the signboards were painted in such gaudy colours ; 
the gilded letters were so very golden ; the bricks were so very 
red, the stone was so very white, the blinds and area railings 
were so very green, the knobs and plates upon the street doors 
so marvellously bright and twinkling ; and all so slight and 
unsubstantial in appearance — that every thoroughfare in the 
city looked exactly like a scene in a pantomime. It rarely 
happens in the business streets that a tradesman, if I may venture 
to call anybody a tradesman, where everybody is a merchant, 
resides above his store; so that many occupations are often 
carried on in one house, and the whole front is covered with 
boards and inscriptions. As I walked along, I kept glancing 
up at these boards, confidently expecting to see a few of them 
change into something; and I never turned a corner suddenly 
without looking out for the clown and pantaloon, who, I had 
no doubt, were hiding in a doorway or behind some pillar close 
at baud. As to Harlequin and Columbine, I discovered imme- 
diately that they lodged (they are always looking after lodgings 
in a pantomime) at a very small clock-maker's, one story high, 
near the hotel; which, in addition to various symbols and 



BOSTOX 



>3 



devices, almost covering the whole front, had a great dial hang- 
ingfout — to be jumped through, of course. 
-.The suburbs are, if possible, even more unsubstantial-looking 
than the city. The white wooden houses (so white that it 
makes one wink to look at them), with their green jalousie blinds, 
are so sprinkled and dropped about in all directions, without 
seeming to have any root at all in the ground; and the small chur- 
ches and chapels are so nrim, and bright, and highly varnished ; 
that I almost believed the whole affair could be taken up piece- 
meal like a child's toy, and crammed into a little box. 

The city is a beautiful one, and cannot fail, I should imagine, 
to impress all strangers very favourably. The private dwell- 
ing-houses are , for the most part, large and elegant; the shops 
extremely good ; ant the public buildings handsome. The State 
House is built upon the summit of a hill, which rises gradually 
at Grst, and afterwards by a steep ascent, almost from the 
water's edge. In front is a green inclosure, called the Common. 
The^site is beautiful : and from the top there is a charming 
panoramic view of the whole town and neighbourhood. Ia 
addition to a variety of commodious offices, it contains two 
handsome chambers : in one the House of Representatives of 
the Slate hold their meetings; in the other, the Senate. Such 
proceedings as I saw here, were conducted with perfect gravity 
and decorum ; and were certainly calculated to inspire atten- 
tion and respect. 

There is no doubt that much of the intellectual refinement 
and superiority of Boston, is referable to the quiet influence o£ 
the University of Cambridge, which is within three or four 
miles of the city. The resident professors at that university 
are gentlemen of learning and varied attainments; and are, 
without one exception that I can call to mind, men who would 
shed a grace upon, and do honour to, any society in the civilised 
world. Many of the resident gentry in Boston and its neigh- 
bourhood, and I thing I am not mistaken in adding, a large 
majority of those who are attached to the liberal professions 
there, have been educated ad this same school. Whatever the 
defects of American universities may be, they disseminate no 

3 



34 



BOSTON. 



prejudices; rear no bigots ; dig up the buried ashes of no old 
superstitions; never interpose between the people and their 
improvement ; exclude no man because of his religious opi- 
nions ; above all, in their whole course of study and instruction, 
recognise a world, and a broad one too, lying beyond the college 
walls. 

It was a source of inexpressible pleasure to me to observe 
the almost imperceptible, but not less certain effect, wrought 
by this institution among the small community of Boston; and 
to note at every turn the humanising tastes and desires it has 
engendered; the affectionate friendships to which it has given 
rise; the amount of vanity and prejudice it has dispelled. The 
golden calf they worship at Boston is a pigmy compared with 
the giant effigies set up in other parts of that vast counting- 
house which lies beyond the Atlantic ; and the almighty dollar 
sinks into something comparatively insignificant, amidst a whole 
Pantheon of better gods. 

Above all, I sincerely believe that the public institutions and 
charities of this capital of Massachusetts are as nearly perfect, 
as the most considerate wisdom, benevolence, and humanity, 
can make them. I never in my life was more affected by the 
contemplation of happiness , under circumstances of privation 
and bereavement, than in my visits to these establishments. ' 

It is a great and pleasant feature of all such institutions in 
America, that they are either supported by the State or assisted 
by the State; or (in the event of their not needing its helping 
hand) that they act in concert with it, and are emphatically the 
people's. I cannot but think, with a view to the principle and 
its tendency to elevate or depress the character of the indus- 
trious classes, that a Public Charity is immeasurably better 
than a Private Foundation, no matter how T munificently the 
latter may be endowed. In our own country, where it has 
not, until within these Ialer days, been a very popular fashion 
with governments to display any extraordinary regard for the 
great mass of the people or to recognise their existence as im- 
proveable creatures, private charities, unexampled in the his- 
tory of the earth, have arisen, to do an incalculable amount 



BOSTON. 



33 



of good among the destitute and afflicted . But the government 
of the country, having neither act nor part in them, is not iu 
the receipt of any portion of the gratitude they inspire j and, 
offering very little shelter or relief beyond that which is to be 
found in the workhouse and the jail, has come, not unnaturally, 
to be looked upon by the poor rather as a stern master, quick 
to correct and punish, than a kind protector, merciful and vi- 
gilant in their hour of need. 

The maxim that out of evil cometh good, is strongly illus- 
trated by these establishments at home; as the records of the 
Prerogative Office in Doctors' Commons can abundantly prove. 
Some immensely rich old gentleman or lady, surrounded by 
needy relatives, makes, upon a low average, a will a-week. 
The old gentleman or lady, never very remarkable in the best 
of times for good temper, is full of aches and pains from head 
to foot ; full of fancies and caprices ; full of spleen, distrust, 
suspicion, and dislike. To cancel old wills, and invent new 
ones, is at last the sole business of such a testator s existence ; 
and relations and friends (some of whom have been bred up 
distinctly to inherit a largo shareof the property, and have been, 
from their cradles, specially disqualiGed from devoting them- 
selves to any useful pursuit, on that account) are so often and 
so unexpectedly and summarily cut off, and re-instated, and 
cut off again, that the whole family, dow T n to the remotest cou- 
sin, is kept in a perpetual fever. At length it becomes plain 
that the old lady or gentleman has not long to live; and the 
plainer this becomes, the more clearly the old lady or gentle- 
man perceives that everybody is in a conspiracy against their 
poor old dying relative ; wherefore the old lady or gentleman 
makes another last will — positively the last this lime — conceals 
the same in a china tea-pot, and expires next day. Then it 
turns out, that the whole of the real and personal estate is 
divided between half-a-dozen charities ; and that the dead and 
gone testator has in pure spite helped to do a great deal of 
good, at the cost of an immense amount of evil passion and 
misery. 

The Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the 



36 



BOSTON. 



Blind, at Boston, is superintended by a body of trustees who 
make an annual report to the corporation. The indigent blind 
of that state are admitted gratuitously. Those from the ad- 
joining state of Connecticut, or from the states of Maine, Ver- 
mont, or New Hampsire, are admitted by a warrant from the 
state to which they respectively belong; or, failing that, must 
find security among their friends, for the payment of about 
twenty pounds English for their Grst year's board and instruc- 
tion, and ten for the second. lt After the first year," say the 
trustees, "an account current will be opened with each pupil ; 
he will be charged wilh the actual cost of his board, which will 
not exceed two dollars per week ; " a trifle more than eight 
shillings English ; ci and he will be credited with the amount 
paid for him by the state, or by his friends ; also with his earn- 
ings over and above the cost of the stock which he uses ; so that 
all his earnings over one dollar per week will be his own. By 
the third year it will be known whether his earnings will more 
than pay the actual cost of his board ; if they should, he will 
have it at his option to remain and receive his earnings, or not. 
Those who prove unable to earn their own livelihood will not 
be retained; as it is not desirable to convert the establishment 
into an almshouse, or to retain any but working bees in the hive . 
Those who by physical or mental imbecility are disqualified for 
work, are thereby disqualified from being members of an in- 
dustrious community,- and they can be better provided for in 
establishments fitted for the infirm." 

I went to see this place one very fine winter morning : an 
Italian sky above, and the air so clear and bright on every side, 
that even my eyes, which are none of the best, could follow the 
minute lines and scraps of tracery in distant buildings. Like 
most other public institutions in America, of the same class, it 
stands a mile or two without the town, in a cheerful healthy 
spot: and is an airy, spacious, handsome edifice. It is built 
upon a height, commanding the harbour. When I paused for 
a moment at the door, and marked how fresh and free the whole 
scene was — what sparkling bubbles glanced upon the waves, 
and welled up even moment to the surface, as though the world 



BOSTON. 



37 



below, like that above, were radiant with the bright day, and 
gushing over in its fulness of light : when I gazed from sail to 
sail away upon a ship at sea, a tiny speck of shining white, the 
only cloud upon the still, deep, distant blue — and, turning, saw 
a blind boy with his sightless face addressed that way, as though 
he too had some sense within him of the glorious distance : I 
felt a kind of sorrow that the place should be so very light, and 
a strange wish that lor his sake it were darker. It was but 
momentary, of course, and a mere fancy, but I felt it keenly for 
all that. 

The children were at their daily tasks in different rooms, 
except a few who were already dismissed, and were at play. 
Here, as in many institutions, no uniform is worn ; and I was 
very glad of it, for two reasons. Firstly, because I am sure 
that nothing but senseless custom and want of thought would 
reconcile us to the liveries and badges we are so fond of at home. 
Secondly, because the absence of these things presents each 
child to the visitor in his or her own proper character, with 
its individuality unimpaired; not lost in a dull, ugly, monoto- 
nous repetition of the same unmeaning garb ; which is really 
an important consideration. The wisdom of encouraging a 
little harmless pride in personal appearance even among the 
blind, or the whimsical absurdity of considering charity and 
leather breeches inseparable companions, as we do, requires no 
comment. 

Good order, cleanliness, and comfort, pervaded every corner 
of the building The various classes, who were gathered round 
their teachers, answered the questions put to them with readi- 
ness and intelligence, and in a spirit of cheerful contest for pre- 
cedence which pleased me very much. Those w ho were at 
play, wereglecsome and noisy as other children. M ore spiriiua 
and affectionate friendships appeared to exist among them, than 
would be found among other young persons suffering under no 
deprivation ; but this I expected and was prepared to find. It 
is a part of the great scheme of Heaven's merciful consideration 
for the afflicted. 

In a portion of the building, set apart for that purpose, are 



38 



BOSTON. 



worsksbops for blind persons whose education is finished, and 
ho have acquired a trade, but who cannot pursue it in an 
ordinary manufactory because of their deprivation. Several 
people were at work here ; making brushes, mattresses, and so 
forth ; and the cheerfulness, industry, and good order discer- 
nible in every other part of the building, extended to this de- 
partment also. 

On the ringing of a bell, the pupils all repaired, without any 
guide or leader, to a spacious music-hall, where they took their 
seats in an orchestra erected for that purpose, and listened with 
manifest delight to a voluntary on the organ, played by one of 
themselves. At its conclusion, the performer, a boy of nineteen 
or twenty, gave place to a girl ; and to her accompaniment they 
all sang a hymn, and afterwards a sort of chorus. It was very 
sad to look upon and hear them, happy though their condition 
unquestionably was ; and I saw that one blind girl, who (being 
for the time deprived of the use of her limbs, by illness) sat close 
beside me with her face towards them, w T ept silently the while 
she listened. 

It is strange to watch the faces of the blind, and see how free 
they are from all concealment of what is passing in their 
thoughts; observing which, a man with eyes may blush to 
contemplate the mask he wears. Allowing for one shade of 
anxious expression w r hieh is never absent from their counte- 
nances, and the like of which we may readily detect in our own 
faces if we try to feel our way in the dark, every idea, as it rises 
within them, is expressed with the lightning's speed, and na- 
ture's truth. If the company at a rout, or drawing-room at 
court, could only for one time be as unconscious of the eyes 
upon them as blind men and women arc, what secrets would 
come out, and what a worker of hypocrisy this sight, the loss of 
w hich we so much pity, would appear to be ! 

The thought occurred to me as I sat down in another room, 
before a girl, blind, deaf, and dumb; destitute of smell; and 
nearly so, of taste : before a fair young creature with every 
human faculty, and hope, and power of goodness and affection, 
inclosed w ithin her delicate frame, and but one outward sense 



BOSTON. 



39 



— the sense of touch. There she was, before me ; built up, as it 
were, in a marble cell, impervious to any ray of light, or par- 
ticle of sound ; with her poor white hand peeping through a 
chink in the wall, beckoning to some good man for help, that 
an Immortal soul might be awakened. 

Long before I looked upon her, the help had come. Her face 
was radiant with intelligence and pleasure. Her hair, braided 
by her own hands, was bound about ahead, whose intellectual 
capacity and development were beautifully expressed in its 
graceful outline, and its broad open brow ; her dress arranged 
by herself, was a pattern of neatness and simplicity ; the work 
she had knitted, lay beside her ; her writing-book was on the 
desk she leaned upon. — From the mournful ruin of such be- 
reavement, there had slowly risen up this gentle, tender, guile- 
less, grateful hearted being. 

Like other inmates of that house, she had a green ribbon 
bound round her eyelids. A doll she had dressed lay near upon 
the ground. I took it up, and saw that she had made a green 
fillet such as she wore herself, and fastened it about its mimic 
eyes. 

She was seated in a little enclosure, made by school desks 
and forms, writing her daily journal. But soon finishing this 
pursuit, she engaged in an animated communication with a 
teacher who sat beside her. This was a favourite mistress with 
the poor pupil. If she could see the face of her fair instruc- 
tress, she would not love her less, I am sure. 

I have extracted a few disjointed fragments of her history, 
from an account, written by that one man who has made her 
what she is. It is a very beautiful and touching narratives 
and I wish I could present it entire. 

Her name is Laura Bridgman. " She was horn in Hanover; 
New Hamsphire, on the twenty-first of December, 1829. She 
is described as having been a very sprightly and pretty infant, 
with bright blue eyes. She was, however, so puny and feeble 
until she was a year and a half old, that her parents hardly 
hoped to rear her. She was subject to severe fits, which 
seemed to rack her frame almost beyond her power of en ~ 



Hi 



BOSTON. 



durance ; and life was held by the feeblest tenure : but when a 
year and a half old, she seemed to rally ; the dangerous symp- 
toms subsided ; and at twenty months old, she was perfectly 
well. 

4 ' Then her mental powers, hitherto stinted in their grow th, 
rapidly developed themselves ; and during the four months of 
health which she enjoyed, she appears (making due allowance 
for a fond mother's account) to have displayed a considerable 
degree of intelligence. 

L< But suddenly she sickened again; her disease raged with 
great violence during five weeks, when her eyes and ears w ere 
inflamed, suppurated, and their contents were discharged. But 
though sight and hearing were gone for ever, the poor child's 
sufferings were not ended. The fever raged during seven 
weeks ; for five months she was kept in bed in a darkened 
room; it was a year before she could walk unsupported, and 
two years before she could sit up all day. It was now observed 
that her sense of smell w r as almost entirely destroyed ; and, 
consequently, that her taste was much blunted. 

" It was not until four years of age that the poor child's bo- 
dily health seemed restored, and she w as able to enter upon her 
apprenticeship of life and the w r orld. 

" But what a situation w 7 as hers ! The darkness and the si- 
lence of the tomb were around her : no mother's smile called 
forth her answering smile, no father's voice taught her to imitate 
his sounds : — they, brothers and sisters, were but forms of 
matter which resisted her touch, but which differed not from 
the furniture of the house, save in warmth, and in the power 
of locomotion ; and not even in these respects from the dog and 
the cat. 

tc But the immortal spirit w hich had been implanted within 
her could not die, nor be maimed nor mutilated ; and though 
most of its avenues of communication with the world w ere cut 
off, it began to manifest itself through the others. As soon as 
she could walk, she began to explore the room, and then the 
house ; she became familiar with the form, density, weight, and 
heat, of every article she could lay her hands upon. She fol- 



BOSTON. 



41 



lowed her mother, and felt her hands and arms, as she was oc- 
cupied about the house ; and her disposition to imitate , led her 
to repeat everything herself. She even learned to sew a little, 
and to knit." 

The reader will scarcely need to he told, however, that the 
opportunities of communicating with her, were very, very li- 
mited; and that the moral effects of her wretched state soon began 
to appear. Those who cannot be enlightened by reason, can 
only be controlled by force ; and this, coupled with her great 
privations, must soon have reduced her to a worse condition 
than that of the beasts that perish, but for timely and unhoped- 
for aid. 

" At this time, I was so fortunate as to hear of the child, and 
immediately hastened to Hanover to see her. I found her with 
a well-formed figure ; a strongly- marked, nervous-sanguine 
temperament ; a large and beautifully-shaped head ; and the 
whole system in healthy action. The parents were easily in- 
duced to consent to her coming to Boston, and on the 4ih of Oc- 
tober, i837, they brought her to the Institution. 

" For a while, she was much bewildered ; and after waiting 
about two weeks, until she became acquainted with her new 
locality, and somewhat familiar with the inmates, the attempt 
was made to give her knowledge of arbitrary signs, by which she 
could interchange thoughts with others. 

" There was one of two ways to be adopted : cither to go on 
to build up a language of signs on the basis of the natural lan- 
guage which she had already commenced herself, or to teach 
her the purely arbitrary language in common use . that is, to 
give her a sign for every individual thing, or to give her a 
knowledge of letters by combination of which she might ex- 
press her idea of the existence, and the mode and condition of 
existence, of any thing. The former would have been easy, 
but very ineffectual ; the latter seemed very difficult, but, if 
accomplished, very effectual. I determined therefore to try 
the latter. 

'* The first experiments were made by taking articles in 
common use, such as knives, forks, spoons, keys, etc. and past- 



42 



BOSTON. 



ing upon thorn labels with their names printed in raised letters. 
These she felt very carefully, and soon, of course, distinguished 
that the crooked lines sp o o n, differed as much from the crook- 
ed lines he y, as the spoon differed from the key in form. 

u Then small detached labels, with the same words printed 
upon them, were pat into her hands ; and she soon observed 
that they were similar to the ones pasted on the articles. She 
showed her perception of this similarity by laying the label key 
upon the key, and the label spoon upon the spoon. She was 
encouraged here by the natural sign of approbation, patting on 
the head. 

" The same process was then repeated with all the articles 
which she could handle ; and she very easily learned to place 
the proper labels upon them. It was evident, however, that 
the only intellectual exercise was that of imitation and memory. 
She recollected that the label book was placed upon a book, 
and she repeated the process first from imitation, next from 
memory, with only the motive of love of approbation, but ap- 
parently without the intellectual perception of any relation 
between the things. 

''After a while, instead of labels, the individual letters were 
given to her on detached bits of paper : they were arranged 
side by side so as to spell book, k e y, etc. ; then they were 
mixed up in a heap and a sign was made for her to arrange 
them herself, so as to express the words b o o k, ke ?/, etc. j and 
she did so. 

"Hitherto, the process had been mechanical, and the success 
about as great as teaching a very knowing dog a variety of 
tricks. The poor child had sat in mute amazement, and pa- 
tiently imitated every thing her teacher did; but now the truth 
began to Hash upon her : her intellect began to work : she per- 
ceived that here was a way by which she could herself make up 
a sign of any thing that was in her own mind, and show it to 
another mind ; and at once her countenance lighted up with a 
human expression : it was no longer a dog, or parrot : it was 
an immortal spirit, eagerly seizing upon a new link of union 
^ith other spirits ! I could almost fix upon the moment when 



BOSTON. 



43 



this truth dawned upon her mind, and spread its light to her coun- 
tenance ; I saw that the great obstacle was overcome : and that 
henceforward nothing but patient and persevering, but plain 
and straightforward, efforts were to be used. 

''The result thus far, is quickly related, and easily conceived; 
but not so was the process ; for many weeks of apparently un- 
profitable labour were passed before it was effected. 

"When it was said above, that a sign was made, it was 
intended to say, that the action was performed by her teacher, 
she feeling his hands, and then imitating the motion. 

" The next step was to procure a set of metal types, with the 
different letters of the alphabet cast upon their ends ; also a 
board, in which were square holes, into which holes she could 
set the types ; so that the letters on their ends could alone be felt 
above the surface. 

(i Then, on any article being handed to her, for instance, a 
pencil, or a watch, she would select the component letters, and 
arrange them on her board, and read them with apparent plea- 
sure. 

u She was exerciced for several weeks in this way, until her 
vocabulary became extensive ; and then the important step w as 
taken of teaching her how to represent the different letters by 
the position of her fingers, instead of the cumbrous apparatus 
of the board and types. She accomplished this speedily and 
easily, for her intellect had begun to work in aid of her teacher, 
and her progress w as rapid. 

u This was the period, about three months after she had com- 
menced, that the first report of her case was made, in which 
it is stated that She has just learned the manual alphabet, as 
used by the deaf mules, and it is a subject of delight and w onder 
to see how rapidly, correctly, and eagerly, she goes on with her 
labours. Her teacher gives her a new object, for instance, a 
pencil, first lets her examine it, and get an idea of its use, then 
teaches her how to spell it by making the signs for the letters with 
her own fingers : the child grasps her hand, and feels her Gngers, 
as the different letters are formed ; she turns her head a little 
on one side, like a person listening closely ; her lips are apart ; 



44 



BOSTON. 



she seems scarcely to breathe; and her countenance, at Grst 
anxious, gradually changes to a smile, as she comprehends the 
lesson. She then holds up her tiny fingers, and spells the word 
in the manual alphabet; next, she takes her types and arranges 
her letters; and last, to make sure that she is right, she takes 
the whole of the types composing the word, and places them 
upon or in contact with the pencil, or whatever the object 
may be/ 

"The whole of the succeeding year was passed in gratifying 
her eager inquiries for the names of every object which she 
could possibly handle; in exercising her in the use of the ma- 
nual alphabet ; in extending in every possible way her know- 
ledge of the physical relations of things ; and in proper care of 
her health. 

" At the end of the year a report of her case was made, from 
which the following is an extract. 

u 4 It has been ascertained beyond the possibility of doubt, 
that she cannot see a ray of light, cannot hear the least sound, 
and never exercises her sense of smell, if she have any. Thus 
her mind dwells in darkness and stillness, as profound as that 
of a closed tomb at midnight. Of beautiful sights, and sweet 
sounds, and pleasant odours, she has no conception ; neverthe- 
less, she seems as happy and playful as a bird or a lamb; and 
the employment of her intellectual faculties, or the acquire- 
ment of a new idea, gives her a vivid pleasure, which is 
plainly marked in her expressive features. She never seems 
to repine, but has all the buoyancy and gaiety of childhood. 
She is fond of fun and frolic, and when playing with the 
rest of the children, her shrill laugh sounds loudest of the 
group. 

u 4 When left alone, she seems very happy if she have her 
knitting or sewing, and will busy herself for hours : if she 
have no occupation, she evidently amuses herself by imaginary 
dialogues or by recalling past impressions ; she counts with 
her fingers, or spells out names of things which she has recently 
learned, in the manual alphabet of the deaf mutes. In this 
lonely self-communion she seems to reason, reflect, and argue : 



BOSTON. 



4-5 



if she spell a word wrong with the fingers of her right hand, 
she instantly strikes it with her left, as her teacher does, in 
sign of disapprobation ; if right, then she pats herself upon the 
head, and looks pleased. She sometimes purposely spells a 
word wrong with the left hand, looks roguish for a moment 
and laughs, and then with the right hand strikes the left, as if 
to correct it. 

" ' During the year she has attained great dexterity in theuse 
of ihe manual alphabet of the deaf mutes ; and she spells out 
the words and sentences which she knows, so fast and so deftly, 
that only those accustomed to this language can follow with the 
eye the rapid motions of her fingers. 

" 'But wonderful as is the rapidity with which she writes 
her thoughts upon the air, still more so is the ease and accuracy 
with which she reads the words thus written by another ; 
grasping their hands in hers, and following every movement of 
their fingers, as letter after letter conveys their meaning to her 
mind. It is in this way that she converses with her blind play- 
mates, and nothing can more forcibly show the power of 
mind in forcing matter to its purpose, than a meeting between 
them. For if great talent and skill are necessary for two pan- 
tomimes to paint their thougths and feelings by the movements 
of the body, and the expression of the countenance, how much 
greater the difficulty when darkness shrouds them both, and the 
one can hear no sound ! 

u ' When Laura is walking through a passage way, with her 
hands spread before her, she knows instantly every one she 
meets, and passes them with a sign of recognition : but if it be a 
girl of her own age, and especially if it be one of her favourites, 
there is instantly a bright smile of recognition, and a twining 
of arms, a grasping of hands, and a swift telegraphing upon 
the tiny fingers ; w 7 hose rapid evolutions convey the thoughts 
and feelings from the outposts of one mind to those of the other. 
There are questions and answers, exchanges of joy or sorrow, 
there are kissings and partings, just as between little children 
with all their senses.' 

u During this year, and six months after she had left home , 



BOSTON. 



her mother came to visit her, and the scene of their meeting 
was an interesting one. 

u The mother stood some time, gazing with overflowing eyes 
upon her unfortunate child, who, all unconscious of her pre- 
sence, was playing about the room. Presently Laura ran 
against her, and at once began feeling her hands, examining 
her dress, and trying to find out if she knew her ; but not suc- 
ceeding in this, she turned away as from a stranger, and the 
poor woman could not conceal the pang she felt, at finding that 
her beloved child did not know her. 

" She then gave Laura a string of beads which she used to 
wear at home, which were recognised by the child at once, 
Who, with much joy, put them around her neck, and sought 
me eagerly to say she understood the string was from her 
home. 

" The mother now tried to caress her, but poor Laura repel- 
led her, preferring to be with her acquaintances. 

" Another article from home was now given her, and she 
began to look much interested ; she examined the stranger much 
closer, and gave me to understand that she knew she came from 
Hanover ; she even endured her caresses , but would leave her 
with indifference at the slightest signal. The distress of the 
mother was now painful to behold ; for, although she had feared 
that she should not be recognized, the painful reality of being, 
treated wiht cold indifference by a darling child, was too much 
for woman's nature to bear. 

u After a while, on the mother taking hold of her again, a 
vague idea seemed to flit across Laura's mind, that this could 
not be a stranger • she therefore felt her hands very eagerly, 
while her countenance assumed an expression of intense in- 
terest ; she beame very pale, and then suddenly red ; hope 
seemed struggling with doubt and anxiety, and never were 
contending emotions more strongly painted upon the human 
face : at this moment of painful uncertainty, the mother drew 
her close to her side,and kissed her fondly,whenatoncethe truth 
flashed upon the child, and all mistrust and anxiety disappeared 
from her face, as with an expression of exceeding joy she eagerly 



BOSTON. 



nestled to the bosom of her parent, and yielded herself to her 
fond embraces. 

u After this, the beads were all unheeded; the playthings 
which were offered to her were utterly disregarded ; her play- 
mates, for whom but a moment before she gladly left the 
stranger, now vainly strove to pull her from her mother ; and 
though she yielded her usual instantaneous obedience to my 
signal to follow me, it was evidently w ith painfnl reluctance. 
She clung close to me, as if bewildered and fearful; and when, 
after a moment, I took her to her mother, she sprang to her 
arms, and clung to her with eager joy. 

u The subsequent parting between them, showed alike the 
affection, the intelligence, and the resolution of the child. 

u Laura accompanied her mother to the door, clinging close 
to her ail the way, until they arrived at the threshold, where 
she paused, and felt around, to ascertain who jwas near her. 
Perceiving the matron, of whom she is very fond, she grasped 
her with one hand, holding on convulsively to her mother with 
the other ; and thus she stood for a moment : then she dropped 
her mother's hand ; put her handkerchief to her eyes ; and 
turning round, clung sobbing to the matron ; while her mother 
departed, with emotions as deep as those of her child. 

"It has been remarked in former reports, that she can dis- 
tinguish different degrees of intellect in others, and that she 
soon regarded almost with contempt, a newcomer, w hen, after 
a few days. >he discovered her weakness of mind. This una- 
miable part of her character has been more strongly developed 
during the past year. 

M She chooses for her friends and companions, those children 
who are intelligent, and can talk best with her ; and she evi- 
dently dislikes to be with those who are deficient in intellect, 
unless, indeed, she can make them serve her purposes, which 
she is evidently inclined to do. She takes advantage of them, 
and makes them wait upon her, in a manner that she knows she 
could not exact of others ; and in^various ways she shows her 
Saxon blood. 



48 



BOSTON. 



"She is fond of having other children noticed and caressed by 
the teachers, and those whom she respects ; but this must not be 
carried too far, or she becomes jealous. She wants to have 
her share, which, if not the lion's, is the greater part 5 and if 
she does not get it, she says, ' My mother will love me.* 

" Her tendency to imitation is so strong, that it leads her to 
actions which must be entirely incomprehensible to her, and 
which can give her no other pleasure than the gratification of 
an internal faculty. She has been known to sit for half an 
hour, holding a book before her sightless eyes, and moving her 
lips, as she has observed seeing people do when reading. 

" She one day pretended that her doll was sick ; and went 
through all the motions of tending it, and giving it medecine ; 
she then put it carefully to bed, and placed a bottle of hot 
water to its feet, laughing all the time most heartily.. When I 
came home, she insisted upon my going to see it, and feel its 
pulse; and when I told her to put a blister on its back, she 
seemed to enjoy it amazingly, and almost screamed with de- 
light. 

" Her social feelings, and her affections, are very strong ; and 
when she is sitting at w T ork, or at her studies, by the side of 
one of her little friends, she will break off from her task every 
few moments, to hug and kiss them with an earnestness and 
warmth that is touching to behold. 

u When left alone, she occupies and apparently amuses her- 
self, and seems quite contented ; and so strong seems to be the 
natural tendency of thought to put on the garb of language, 
that she often soliquizes in the finger language, slow and tedious 
as it is. But is is only w hen alone, that she is quiet : for if she 
become sensible of the presence of any one near her, she is 
restless until she can sit close beside them, hold their hand, and 
converse with them by signs. 

u In her intellectual character it is pleasing to observe an 
insatiable thirst for knowledge, and a quick perception of the 
relations of things. In her moral character, it is beautiful to 
behold her continual gladness, her keen enjoyment of existence, 
her expansive love, her unhesitating confidence, her sympathy 



BOSTON. 49 

with suffering, her conscientiousness, truthfulness, and hope- 
fulness." 

Such are a few fragments from the simple but most interest- 
ing and instructive history of Laura Bridgman. The name of 
her great benefactor and friend, who writes it, is Doctor Howe. 
There are not many persons, I hope and believe, who, after 
reading these passages, can ever hear that name with indiffe- 
rence. 

A further account has been published by Dr. Howe, since 
the report from which I have just quoted. It describes her 
rapid mental growth and improvement during twelve months 
more, and brings her little history down to the end of last year. 
It is very remarkable, that as we dream in words, and 
carry on imaginary conversations, in which we speak both for 
ourselves and for the shadows who appear to us in those visions 
of the night, so she, having no words, uses her finger alphabet 
in her sleep. And it has been ascertained that when her slumber 
is broken, and is much disturbed by dreams, she expresses her 
thoughts in an irregular and confused manner on her fingers : 
just as we should murmur and mutter them indistinctly, in the 
like circumstances. 

I turned over the leaves of her Diary, and found it written 
in a fair legible square hand, and expressed in terms which 
were quite intelligible without any explanation. On my say- 
ing that I should like to sec her write again, the teacher who 
sat beside her, bade her, in their language, sign her name upon 
a slip of paper, twice or thrice. In doing so, I observed that 
she kept her left hand always touching, and following up, her 
right, in which, of course, she held the pen. No line was 
indicated by any contrivance, but she wrote straight and 
freely. 

She had, until now, been quite unconscious of the presence 
of visitors; but, having her hand placed in that of the gentleman 
who accompanied me, she immediately expressed his name 
upon her teacher's palm. Indeed her sense of touch is now so 
exquisite, that having been acquainted with a person once, she 
can recognise him or her after almost any interval. This 

4 



50 



BOSTON. 



gentleman bad been in her company, I believe, but very seldom, 
and certainly bad not seen her for many months. My hand she 
rejected at once, as she does that of any man who is a stranger 
to her. But she retained my w ife's with evident pleasure, 
kissed her, and examined her dress with a girl's curiosity and 
i.iterest. 

She was merry and cheerful, and showed much innocent 
playfulness in her intercourse with her teacher. Her delight 
on recognising a favourite playfellow and companion— herself 
a blind girl— w ho silently, and with an equal enjoyment of the 
CDming surprise, took a seat beside her, was beautiful to witness. 
It elicited from her at first, as other slight circumstances did 
twice or thrice during my visit, an uncouth noise which w r as 
rather painful to hear. But on her teacher touching her lips, 
she immediately desisted, and embraced her laughingly and 
affectionately. 

I had previously been into another chamber, w here a number 
of blind boys were swinging, and climbing, and engaged in 
various sports. They all clamoured, as we entered, to the 
assistant- master, w ho accompanied us, " Look at me, Mr. Hart ! 
Please, Mr. Hart, look at me! " evincing, I thought, even in 
this, an anxiety peculiar to their condition, that their little 
feats of agility should be seen. Among them was a small 
laughing fellow, who stood aloof, entertaining himself with a 
gymnastic exercise for bringing the arms and chest into play; 
which he enjoyed mightily ; especially when, in thrusting out 
his right arm, he brought it into contact w ith another boy. 
Like Laura Bridgman, this young child was deaf, and dumbj 
and blind. 

Dr. Howe's account of this pupil's first instruction is so very 
striking, and so intimately connected w ith Laura herself, that 
I cannot refrain from a short extract. I may premise that the 
poor boy's name is Oliver Caswell ; that he is thirteen years of 
age; and that he was in full possession of all his faculties, 
until three years and four months old. He was then attacked 
by scarlet fever : in four weeks became deaf ; in a few weeks 
more, blind; in six months, dumb. He showed his anxious 



BOSTON. 



51 



sense of this last deprivation, by often feeling the lips of other 
persons when they were talking, and then putting his hand 
upon his own, as if to assure himself that he had them in the 
right position. 

" His thirst for knowledge," says Dr. Howe, " proclaimed 
itself as soon as he entered the house, by his eager examination 
of every thing he could feel or smell in his new location. For 
instance, treading upon the (register of a furnace, he instantly- 
stooped down, and began to feel it, and soon discovered the 
way in which the upper plate moved upon the lower one ; but 
this was not enough for him, so lying down upon his face, he 
applied hi* tongue flrst to one then to the other, anM seemed to 
discover that they were of different kinds of metal. • 

u His signs were expressive : and the strictly natural lan- 
guage, laughing, crying, sighing, kissing, embracing, etc., 
was perfect. 

kt Some of the analogical signs which (guided by his faculty 
of imitation) he had contrived, were comprehensible ; such as 
the waving motion of his hand for the motion of a boat, the 
circular one for a wheel, etc. 

M The first object was to break up the use of these signs, and 
to substitute for them the use of purely arbitrary ones. 

M Profiting by the experience I had gained in the other 
cases, I omitted several steps of the process before employed, 
and commenced at once with the finger language. Taking 
therefore, several articled having short names, such as key, 
cup, mug, etc., and with Laura for an auxiliary, I sat down, 
and taking his hand, placed it upon one of them, and then 
with my own, made the letters k e y. He felt my hand eagerly 
with both of his, and on my repeating the process, lie evidently 
tried to imitate the motions of my fingers. In a few minutes 
he contrived to feel the motions of my fingers with one hand, 
and holding out the other he tried to imilate them, laughing 
most heartily when he succeeded. L-mra was by, interested 
even to agitation ; and the two presented a' singular sight i her 
face w T as Hushed and anxious, and her fingers twined in among 
ours so closely as to folio w every motion, but so lightly as not 



52 



BOSTON. 



to embarrass Ihcm ; while Oliver stood attentive, his head a 
little aside, his face turned up, his left hand grasping mine, 
and his right held out : at every motion of my fingers his coun- 
tenance betokened keen attention ; there was an expression of 
anxiety as he tried to imitate the motions ; then a smile came 
stealing out as he thought he could do so, and spread into a 
joyous laugh the moment he succeeded, and felt me pat his 
head, and Laura clap him heartily upon the back, and jump 
up and down in her joy. 

" He learned more than a half dozen letters in half an hour, 
and seemed delighted with his success, at least in gaining ap- 
probation. " His attention then began to Hag, and I commenced 
playing with him. It was evident that in all this he had merely 
been imitating the motions of my fingers, and placing his 
hand upon the key, cup, etc., as part of the process, without 
any perception of the relation between the sign and the object. 

" When he was tired with play I took him back to the table, 
and he was quite ready to begin again his process of imitation. 
He soon learned to make the letters for key, pen, pin; and by- 
having the object repeatedly placed in his hand, he at last 
perceived the relation I wished to establish between them. This 
was evident, because, when I made the letters pin or p e n 3 
or c u p, he would select the article. 

" The perception of this relation was not accompanied by 
that radiant flash of intelligence, and that glow of joy, which 
marked the delightful moment when Laura first perceived it. I 
then placed all the articles on the table, and going away a little 
distance with the children, placed Oliver's fingers in the positions 
to spell key, on which Laura went and brought the article : 
the little fellow seemed to be much amused by this, and looked 
very attentive and smiling. I then caused him to make the let- 
ters bread, and in an instant Laura went and brought him a 
piece : he smelled at it : put it to his lips ; cocked up his head 
with a most knowing look 5 seemed to reflect a moment; and 
then laughed outrigtit, as much as to say, c Aha ! I understand 
now how something may be made out of this.' 
"It was now clear that he had the capacity and inclination 



BOSTON. 



53 



to learn, that he was a proper subject for instruction and need- 
ed only persevering attention. I therefore put him in the 
hands of an intelligent teacher, nothing doubting of his rapid 
progress." 

AVell may this gentleman call that a delightful moment, in 
which some distant promise of her present state first gleamed 
upon the darkened mind of Laura Bridgman. Throughout 
his life, the recollection of that moment will be to him a source 
of pure, unfading happiness; nor will it shine least brightly on 
the evening of his days of Noble Usefulness. 

The affection that exists between these two — the master and 
the pupil — is as far removed from all ordinary care and regard, 
as the circumstances in which it has had its growth, are apart 
from the common occurrences of life. He is occupied now, in 
devising means of imparting to her, higher knowledge ; and of 
conveying to her some adequate idea of the Great Creator of 
that universe in which, dark and silent and scentless though it 
be to her, she has such deep delight and glad enjoyment. 

Ye who have eyes and see not, and have ears and hear not; 
ye who arc as the hypocrites of sad countenances, and disfigure 
your faces that ye may seem unto men to fast ; learn healthy 
cheerfulness, and mild contentment, from the deaf, and dumb, 
and blind! Self-elected saints with gloomy brows, this sightless, 
earless, voiceless child may teach you lessons you will do well to 
follow. Let that poor hand of hers lie gently on your hearts ; 
for there may be something in its healing touch akin to that of 
the Great Master whose precepts you misconstrue, whose les- 
sons you pervert, of whose charily and sympathy with all the 
woild, not one among you in his daily practice knows as 
much as many of the worst among those fallen sinners, to 
whom you are liberal in nothing but the preachment of per- 
dit ;on! 

As I rose to quit the room, a pretty little child of one of the 
attendants came running in to greet its father. For the moment, 
a child with eyes, among the sightless crowd, impressed me 
almost as painfully as the blind bey in the porch had done, two 
hours ago. Ah ! how much brighter and more deeply blue, 



BOSTON. 



glowing and rich though it had been before, was the scene 
without, contrasting with the darkness of so many youthful lives 
within ! 



At South Boston, as it is called, in a situation exccllently 
adapted for the purpose, several charitable institutions are 
clustered together. One of these, is the State Hospital for the 
insane ; admirably conducted on those enlightened principles 
of conciliation and kindness, which twenty years ago would 
have been worse than heretical, and which have been acted 
upon with so much success in our own pauper asylum at 
Han veil. Evince a desire to show some confidence, and re- 
pose some trust, even in mad people, " — said the resident phy- 
sician, as we walked along the galleries, his patients flocking 
round us unrestrained. Of those who deny or doubt the 
wisdom of this maxim after witnessing its effects, if there be 
such people still alive, I can only say that I hope I may never 
be summoned as a Juryman on a Commission of Lunacy w hereof 
they are the subjects ; for I should certainly find them out of 
their senses, on such evidence alone. 

Each ward in this institution is shaped like a long gallery or 
hall, with the dormitories of the patients opening from it on 
either hand. Here they w ork, read, play at skittles, and other 
games; and when the w r eather does not admit of their taking- 
exercise out of doors, pass the day together. In one of these 
rooms, seated, calmly, and quite as a matter of course, among 
a throng of madwomen, black and white, were the physician's 
wife and another lady, with a couple of children. These ladies 
were graceful and handsome , and it was not difficult Id per- 
ceive at a glance that even their presence there, had a highly 
beneficial influence on the patients who were grouped about 
them. 

Leaning her head against the chimney-piece, with a great 
assumption of dignity and refinement of manner, sat an elderly 



BOSTON. 



o5 



female, in as many scraps of finery as Madge Wildfire herself. 
Her head in particular was so strewn with scraps of gauze and 
cotton and bits of paper, and had so many queer odds and ends 
stuck all about it, that it looked like a bird s-nest. She was 
radiant with imaginary jewels ; wore a rich pair of undoubted 
gold spectacles ; and gracefully dropped upon her lap, as we 
approached, a very old greasy newspaper, in which I dare say 
she had been reading an account of her own presentation at 
some Foreign Court. 

I have been thus particular in describing her, because she 
will serve to exemplify the physician's manner of acquiring 
and retaining the confidence of his patients. 

u This," he said aloud, taking me by the hand, and advancing 
to the fantastic figure with great politeness — not raising her 
suspicions by the slightest look or whisper, or any kind of aside; 
to me : " This lady is the hostess of this mansion, sir. It be- 
longs to her. Nobody else has anything whatever to do with 
it. It is a large establishment, as you see, and requires a great 
number of attendants. She lives, you observe, in the very 
first style. She is kind enough to receive my visits, and to 
permit my wife and family to reside here; for which, it is 
hardly necessary to say, we are much indebted to her. She is 
exceedingly courteous, you perceive," on this hint she bowed, 
condescendingly, 4 'and will permit me to have the pleasure of 
introducing you : a gentleman from England, Ma'am : newly- 
arrived from England, after a very tempestuous passage : Mr. 
Dickens,— the lady of the house ! " 

We exchanged the most dignified salutations with profound 
gravity and respect, and so went on. The rest of the mad- 
women seemed to understand the joke perfectly (not only in 
this case, but in all the others, except their own), and to be 
highly amused by it. The nature of their several kinds of insan- 
ity was made known to me in the same way, and we left each 
of them in high good humour. Not only is a thorough confi- 
dence established, by these means, between physician and pa- 
tient, in respect of the nature and extent of their hallucinations, 
but it is easy to understand that opportunities are afforded for 



56 



BOSTON. 



seizing any moment of reason, to startle them by placing their 
own delusion before them in its most incongruous and ridicu- 
lous light. 

Every patient in this asylum sits down to dinner every day 
with a knife and fork ; and in the midst of them sits the gentle- 
man, whose manner of dealing with his charges, I have just 
described. At every meal, moral influence alone restrains the 
more violent among them from cutting the throats of the rest ; 
but the effect of that influence is reduced to an absolute cer- 
tainty, and is found, even as a means of restraint, to say no- 
thing of it as a means of^cure, a hundred times more efficacious 
lhan all the strait-waistcoats, fetters, and handcuffs, that igno- 
rance, prejudice , and cruelty have manufactured since the 
creation of the world. 

In the labour department, every patient is as freely trusted 
with the tools of his trade as if he were a sane man. In the 
garden, and on the farm, they work with spades, rakes, and 
hoes. For amusement, they walk, run, fish, paint, read, and 
ride out to take the air in carriages provided for the purpose. 
They have among themselves a sewing society to make clothes 
for the poor, which holds meetings, passes resolutions, never 
comes to Gsty cuffs or bowie-knives as sane assemblies have 
been known to do elsewhere ; and conducts all its proceedings 
with the greatest decorum. The irritability, which would 
otherwise be expended on their own flesh, clothes, and fur- 
niture, is dissipated in these pursuits. They are cheerful, 
tranquil, and healthy. 

Once a week, they have a ball, in which the Doctor and his 
family, with all the nurses and attendants, take an active part. 
Dances and marches are performed alternately, to the enlivening 
strains of a piano ; and now and then some gentleman or lady 
(whose proQciency has been previously ascertained) obliges the 
company with a song nor does it ever degenerate, at a lender 
crisis, into a screech or howl; wherein, I must confess, I 
should have thought the danger lay. At an early hour they 
all meet together for these feslive purposes; at eight o'clock 
refreshments are served ; and at nine they separate. 



4 



BOSTON. 



Immense politeness and good-breeding are observed through- 
out. They all take their tone from the Doctor ; and he moves 
a very Chesterfield among the company. Like other assem- 
blies, these entertainments afford a fruitful topic of conversa- 
tion among the ladies for some days ; and the gentlemen are so 
anxious to shine on these occasions, that they have been so- 
metimes found "practising their steps" in private, to cut a 
more distinguished figure in the dance. 

It is obvious that one great feature of this system, is the in- 
culcation and encouragement, even among such unhappy per- 
sons, of a decent self-respect. Something of the same spirit 
pervades all the Institutions at South Boston. 

There is the House of Industry. In that branch of it, which 
is devoted to the reception of old or otherwise helpless paupers, 
these words are painted on the walis : "Worthy of Notice. 
Self-government, Qdietdde, a;nd Peace, are Blessings." It is 
not assumed and taken for granted that being there they must 
be evil-disposed and wicked people, before whose vicious eyes 
it is necessary to flourish threats and harsh restraints. They 
are met at the very threshold with this mild appeal. All 
within-doors is very plain and simple, as it ought to be, but 
arranged with a view to peace and comfort. It costs no more 
than any other plan of arrangement, but it bespeaks an amount 
of consideration for those who are reduced to seek a shelter 
there, which puts them at once upon their gratitude and good 
behaviour. Instead of being parcelled out in great, long, 
rambling wards, where a certain amount of weazen life may 
mope, and pine, and shiver, all day long, the building is di- 
vided into separate rooms, each with its share of light and air. 
In these, the better kind of paupers live. They have a motive 
for exertion and becoming pride, in the desire to make these 
little chambers comfortable and decent. I do not remember 
one but it was clean and neat had its plant or two upon the 
window 7 -sill, or row of crockery upon the shelf, or small display 
of coloured prints upon the white-washed w all, or, perhaps, 
its wooden clock behind the door. 

The orphans and young children are in an adjoining building j 



58 



BOSTON. 



separate from this, but a part of the same Institution. Some 
are such little creatures, that the stairs are of lilliputian 
measurement, fitted to their tiny strides. Tne same consider- 
ation for their years and weakness is expressed in their very 
seats, which are perfect curiosities, and look like articles of 
furniture for a pauper doll's-house. I can imagine the glee of 
our Poor Law Commissioners at the notion of these seats hav- 
ing arms and backs; but small spines being of older date than 
their occupation of the Board -room at Somerset House, I 
thought even this provision very merciful and kind. 

Here again, I was greatly pleased with the inscriptions on 
the all, which were scraps of plain morality, easily remember- 
ed and understood : such as u Love one another" — u God 
remembers the smallest creature in his creation = :; and straight- 
forward advice of that naturo. The books and tasks of these 
smallest of scholars, were adapted, in the same judicious man- 
ner, to their childish powers. When we had examined these 
lessons, four morsels of girls (of whom one was blind) sang a 
little song, about the merry month of May, which I thought 
(being extremely dismal) would have suited an English No- 
vember better. That done, we went to see their sleeping- 
rooms on the floor above, in which the arrangements were no 
less excellent and gentle than those we had seen below. And 
after observing that the teachers were of a class and character 
well suited to the spirit of the place, I took leave of the infants 
with a lighter heart than ever I have taken leave of pauper 
infants yet. 

Connected with the House of Industry, there is also a Hospi- 
tal, which was in the best order, and had, 1 am glad to say, 
many beds unoccupied. It had one fault, however, which is 
common to all American interiors : the presence of the eternal, 
accursed, suffocating, red-hot demon of a stove, whose breath 
would blight the purest air under Heaven. 

There are two establishments for boys in this same neigh- 
bourhood. One is called the Boylston school, and is an asylum 
for neglected and indigent boys who have committed no crime, 
but who in the ordinary course of things would very soon be 



BOSTON. 



59 



purged of that distinction if they were not taken from the 
hungry streets and sent here. The oiher is a House of Refor- 
mation for Juvenile Offenders. They are both under the same 
roof, but the two classes of boys never come in contact. 

The Boylston boys, as may be readily supposed, have very 
much the advantage of the others in point of personal ap- 
pearance. They were in their school-room when I came upon 
them, and answered correctly, without book, such questions as 
w here was England ; how far was it ; what was its population ; 
its capital city: its form of government; and so forth. They 
sang a song too, about a farmer sowing his seed : with cor- 
responding action at such parts as tC 'tis thus he sows, *' u he 
turns him round, " " he claps his hands ; " which gave it greater 
interest for them, and accustomed them to act together, in an 
orderly manner. They appeared exceedingly well taught, and 
not better taught than fed ; for a more chubby -looking, full- 
waistcoated set of boys, 1 never saw. 

The juvenile offenders had not such pleasant faces by a great 
deal, and in this establishment there were many boys of colour. 
I saw them first at their work (basket-making, and the manu- 
facture of palm-leaf hats), afterwards in their school, where 
they sang a chorus in praise of Liberty : an odd, one would 
think, rather aggravating, theme for prisoners. These boys 
are divided into four classes, each denoted by a numeral, worn 
on a badge upon the arm. On the arrival of a newcomer, he 
is put into the fourth or lowest class, and left, by good be- 
haviour, to work his way up into the first. The design and 
object of this Ii-islitution is to reclaim the youthful criminal by 
firm but kind and judicious treatment; to make his prison a 
place of purification and improvement, not of demoralisation 
and corruption j to impress upon him that there is but one path, 
and that one sober industry, which can ever lead him to. happi- 
ness ; to teach him how it may be trodden, if his footsteps have 
never yet been led that w ay ; and to lure him back to it if they 
have strayed : in a word, to snatch him from destruction, and 
restore him to society a penitent and useful member. The 
importance of such an establishment, in every point of view, 



60 



BOSTON. 



and with reference to every consideration of huma nityand so- 
cial policy, requires no comment. 

One other establishment closes the catalogue. It is the 
House of Correction for the Slate, iu which silence is strictly 
maintained, but where the prisoners have the comfort and 
mental relief of seeing each other, and of working together. 
This is the improved system of Prison Discipline which we 
have imported into England, and which has been in successful 
operation among us for some years past. 

America, as a new and not over-populated country, has, in 
all her prisons, the one great advantage, of being enabled to find 
useful and profitable work for the inmates; whereas, with us, 
the prejudice against prison labour is naturally very strong, 
and almost insurmountable, when honest men, who have not 
offended against the laws, are frequently doomed to seek em- 
ployment in vain. Even in the United States, the principle of 
bringing convict labour and free labour into a competition 
which must obviously be to the disadvantage of the latter, has 
already found many opponents, whose number is not likely to 
diminish with access of years. 

For this very reason though, our best prisons would seem at 
the first glance to be better conducted than those of America. 
The treadmill is accompanied with little or no noise; five 
hundred men may pick oakum in the same room, without a 
sound ; and both kinds of labour admit of such keen and vigilant 
superintendence, as will render even a word of personal com- 
munication among the prisoners almost impossible. On the 
other hand, the noise of the loom, the forge, the carpenter's 
hammer, or the stone-mason's saw, greatly favour those op- 
portunities of intercourse — hurried and brief no doubt, but op- 
portunities still — which these several kinds of work, by render- 
ing it necessary for men to be employed very near to each other, 
and often side by side, without any barrier or partition 
between them, in their very nature present. A visitor, too, 
requires to reason and reflect a little, before the sight of a 
number of men engaged in ordinary labour, such as he is accus- 
tomed to out of doors, will impress him half as strongly as the 



BOSTON. 



Gi 



contemplation of the same persons in the same place and garb 
would, if they were occupied in some task, marked and degraded 
everywhere as belonging only to felons in jails. In an American 
stale prison or house of correction, I found it difficult at first 
to persuade myself that I was really in a jail : a place of igno- 
minious punishment and endurance. And to this hour I very- 
much question whether the humane boast that it is not like one, 
has its root in the true w isdom or philosophy of the matter. 

I hope I may not be misunderstood on this subject, for it is 
one in which I lake a strong and deep interest. I incline as 
little to the sickly feeling which makes every canting lie or 
maudlin speech of a notorious criminal a subject of news-paper 
report and general sympathy, as I do to those good old customs 
of the good old times w hich made England, even so recently as 
in the reign of the Third King George, in respect of her criminal 
code and her prison regulations, one of the most bloody-minded 
and barbarous countries on the earth. If I thought it would 
do any good to the rising generation, I would cheerfully give 
my consent to the disinterment of the bones of any genleel 
highwayman (the more genteel, the more cheerfully), and to 
their exposure, piece-meal, on any sign-post, gate, or gibbet, 
that might be deemed a good elevation for the purpose. My 
reason is as well convinced that these gentry were utterly 
worthless and debauched villains., as it is that the laws and 
jails hardened them in their evil courses, or that their wonder- 
ful escapes were effected by the prison-turnkeys w ho, in those 
admirable days, had always been felons themselves, and were, 
to the last, their bosom-friends and pot-companions. At the 
same time I know, as all men do or should, that the subject of 
Pr ison Discipline is one of the highest importance to a any com- 
munity ; and that in her sweeping reform and bright example 
to other coun tries on this head, America has show n great 
w isdom, great benevolence, and exalted policy. In contrasting 
her system with that which we have modelled upon it, I 
merely seek to show that with all its drawbacks, ours has some 
advantages of its own *. 



* -Apart from profit made by the useful labour of prisoners, which we can never 



62 



BOSTON. 



The House of Correction which has led to these remarks, is 
not walled, like other prisons, but is palisaded round about 
with tall rough stakes, something after the manner of an en- 
closure for keeping elephants in, as we see it represented in 
Eastern prints and pictures. The prisoners wear a arti-co- 
lourcd dress j and those who are sentenced to hard labour, 
work at nail-making or stone-cutting. When I was there, the 
latter class of labourers were employed upon the stone for a 
new custom-house in course of erection at Boston. They ap- 
peared to shape it skilfully and with expedition, though there 
were very few among tl.em (if any ) who had not acquired the 
art within the prison gates. 

The women, all in one large room, were employed in making 
light clothing, for New Orlear.s and the Southern States. They 
did their work in silence, like the men ; and like them, were 
overlooked by the person contracting for their labour, or by 
some agent of his appointment. In addition to this, they are 
every momentliable to be visited by the prison officers appointed 
for that purpose. 

The arrangements for cooking, washing of clothes, and so 
forth, are much upon the plan of those I have seen at home. 
Their mode of bestowing the prisoners at night (which is of 
general adoption ) differs from ours, and is both simple and 
effective. In the cenfre of a lofty area, lighted by windows in 
the four walls, are five tiers of cells, one above the other; each 
tier having before it a light iron gallery, attainable by stairs of 
the same construction and material : excepting the lower one, 
which is on the ground. Behind these, back to back with them 
and facing the opposite wall, are five corresponding rows of 

hope to realize to any great extent, and which it is perhaps not expedient for us to 
try to gain, there are two prisons in London, in all respects erjual, and in some 
decidedly superior, to any 1 saw or have ever heard or read of in America. One 
,> tlieTolhill Fields Bridewell, conducted by Lieutenant A. F. Tracey, R. N. : the 
other the Middlesex House of Correction, superintended by Mr. Chesterton. Thi* 
gentleman also holds an appomlm:n; in the Public Service. Both are enlightened 
and superior men .- and it would be as difficult to lind persons better qualified for 
the functions they discharge with firmness, zeal, intelligence, and humanity, as it 
would be to exceed the perfect order and arrangement of the institutions they 
govern. 



BOSTO>\ 



G3 



cells, accessible by similar means : so that supposing the pri- 
soners locked up in their cells, an officer stationed on the ground, 
with his back to the wall, has half their number under his eye 
at once; the remaining half being equally under the observation 
of another officer on the opposite side : and all in one great 
apartment. Unless this watch be corrupted or sleeping on his 
post, it is impossible for a man to escape; for even in the event 
of his forcing the iron door of his cell without noise (which is 
exceedingly improbable), the moment he appears outside, and 
steps into that one of the five galleries on which it is situated, 
he must be plainly and fully visible to the officer below. Each 
of these cells holds a small truckle-bed, in which one prisoner 
sleeps; never more. It is small, of course; and the door being 
not solid, but grated, and without blind or curtain, the prisoner 
within is at all times exposed to the observation and inspection 
of any guard who may pass along that tier at any hour or mi- 
nute of the night., Every day, the prisoners receive their din- 
ner, singly, through a trap in the kitchen wall ; and each 
man carries his to his sleeping cell to eat it, where he is 
locked up, alone, for that purpose, one hour. The whole of 
this arrangement struck me as being admirable ; and I hope 
that the next new prison we erect in England may be built on 
this plan. 

I was given to understand that in this prison no swords or 
fire arms, or even cudgels, are kept ; nor is it probable that, so 
tyngasits present excellent managementcontinues, any weapon, 
offensive or defensive, will ever be required witnin its bounds. 
'I Such are the Institutions at South Boston ! In all of them, 
the unfortunate or degenerate citizens of the Slate are care- 
fully instructed in their duties both to God and man ; are sur- 
rounded by all reasonable means of comfort and happiness that 
their condition will admit of; are appealed to, as members of 
the great human family, however afflicted, indigent, or fallen ; 
are ruled by the strong Heart, and not by the strong (though 
immeasurably weaker Hand. I have described them at some 
length : firstly, because their worth demanded it; and secondly, 
because I mean to take them for a model, and to content 



BOSTON. 



myself with saying of others we may come to, whose design 
and purpose are the same, that in this or that respect they 
practically fail, or differ. 

I wish by this account of them, imperfect in its execution, 
but in its just intention, honest, I could hope to convey to my 
readers one hundred ih part of the gratification, the sights I 
have described, afforded me. H 



To an Englishman, accustomed to the paraphernalia of West- 
minster Hall, an American Court of Law is as odd a sight as, I 
suppose, an English Court of Law would be to an American. 
Except in the Supreme Court at Washington (where the judges 
wear a plain black robe), there is no such thing as a wig or 
gown connected wi th the administration of j ustice. The gentle- 
men of (he bar being barristers and attorneys too ( for there is 
no division of those functions as in England), are no more re- 
moved from their clients than attorneys in our Court for the 
Relief of Insolvent Debtors are, from theirs. The jury are 
quite at home, and make themselves as comfortable as circum- 
stances will permit. The witness is so little elevated above, 
or put aloof from, the crowd in the court, that a stranger enter- 
ing during a pause in the proceedings w ? ould find it difficult to 
pick him out from the rest. And if it chanced to be a criminal 
trial, his eyes, in nine cases out of ten, would wander to the 
dock in search of the prisoner, in vain; for that gentleman 
would most likely be lounging among the most distinguished 
ornaments of the legal profession, whispering suggestions in 
his counsel's ear, or making a toothpick out of an old quill with 
his pen-knife. 

I could not but notice these differences, when I visited the 
courts at Boston. I was much surprised at first, too, to observe 
that the counsel who interrogated the witness under examina- 
tion at the lime, did so sitting. Bu! seeing that he was also oc- 



BOSTON. 



eupied in writing down the answers, and remembering that he 
was alone and had no ''junior," I quickly consoled myself with 
the rellcction that law was not quite so expensive an article 
here, as at home; and that the absence of sundry formalities 
which we regard as indispensable, had doubtless a very favour- 
able influence upon the bill of costs. 

In every Court, ample and commodious provision is made for 
the accommodation of the citizens. This is the case all through 
America. In every Public Institution, the right of the people 
to attend, and to have an interest in the proceedings, is most 
fully and distinctly recognised There are no grim door-keep- 
ers to dole out their tardy civility by the sixpenny-worth; nor 
is there, I sincerely believe, any insolence of office of any kind. 
Nothing national is exhibited for money; and no public officer 
is a showman. We have begun of late years to imitate this good 
example. 1 hope we shall continue to do so; and that in the 
fulnessof time, even deans and chapters may be converted. 

In the civil court an action was trying, for damages sustained 
in some accident upon a railway. The witnesses had been 
examined, and counsel was addressing the jury. The learned 
gentleman like a few of his English brethren) was desperately 
long-winded, and had a remarkable capacity of saying the same 
thing over and over again. His great theme was "Warren the 
engine driver."' whom he pressed into the service of every sen- 
tence he uttered. I listened to him for about a quarter of an 
hour: and, coming out of court at the expiration of that time, 
without the faintest ray of enlightenment as to the merits of the 
case, felt as if I were at home again. 

In the prisoners' cell, wailing to be examined by the magis- 
trate on a charge of theft, was a boy. This lad, instead of being 
committed to a common jail, would be sent to the asylum at 
South Bos'.on, and there taught a trade; and in the course of 
time he would be bound apprentice to some respectable master. 
Thus, his detection in this offence, instead of being the prelude 
to a life of infamy and a miserable death, would lead, there was 
a reasonable hope, to his being reclaimed from vice, and be- 
coming a worthy member of society. 



66 



BOSTON. 



J am by no means a wholesale admirer of our legal solemn- 
ities, many of which impress me as being exceedingly ludi- 
crous. Strange as it may seem too, there is undoubtedly a 
degree of protection in the wig and gown — a dismissal of indi- 
vidual responsibility in dressing for the part— which encourages 
that insolent bearing and language, and that gross perversion 
of the office of a pleader for The Truth, so frequent in our 
courts of law. Still, I cannot help doubting whether America, 
in her desire to shake off the absurdities and abuses of the old 
system, may not have gone too far into the opposite extreme ; 
and whether it is not desirable, especially in the small com- 
munity of a city like this, where each man knows the other, to 
surround the administration of justice with some artificial bar- 
riers against the "Hail fellow, well met" deportment of every- 
day life. All the aid it can have in the very high character and 
ability of the Bench, not only here but elsewhere, it has, and 
well deserves to have ; but it may need something more : not to 
impress the thoughtful and the well-informed, but the ignorant 
and heedless ; a class which includes some prisoners and many 
witnesses. These institutions were established, no doubt, upon 
the principle that those who had so large a share in making 
the laws, would certainly respect them. But experience has 
proved this hope to be fallacious ; for no men know better than 
he Judges of America, that on the occasion of any great po- 
ular excitement the law is powerless, and cannot, for the 
time, assert its own supremacy. 

The tone of society in Boston is one of perfect politeness, 
courtesy, and good breeding. The ladies are unquestionably 
very beautiful— in face : but there 1 am compelled to stop. 
Their education is much as with us ; neither better nor worse. 
I had heard some very marvellous stones in this respect ■ but not 
believing them, was not disappointed. Blue ladies there are, 
in Boston; but like philosophers of that colour and sex in most 
other latitudes, they rather desire to be thought superior than 
to be so. Evangelical ladies there are, likewise, whose at- 
tachment to the forms of religion, and horror of theatrical en- 
tertainments, are most exemplary. Ladies who have a passion 



BOSTON. 



67 



for attending lectures are to be found among all classes and all 
conditions. In the kind of provincial life which prevails in 
cities such as this, the Pulpit has great influence. The pecu- 
liar province of the Pulpit in New England (always excepting 
the Unitarian ministry) would appear to be the denouncement 
of all innocent and rational amusements. The church, the 
chapel, and the lecture-room, are the only means of excitement 
excepted ; and to the church, the chapel, and the lecture-room, 
the ladies resort in crowds. 

Wherever religion is resorted to, as a strong drink, and as an 
escape from the dull monotonous round of home, those of its 
ministers who pepper the highest will be the surest to please. 
They who strew the Eternal Path w ith the greatest amount of 
brimstone, and who most ruthlessly tread down the flowers and 
leaves that grow by the way-side, will be voted the most 
righteous 5 and they who enlarge with the greatest pertinacity 
on the difficulty of getting into heaven, will be considered by all 
true believers certain of going there « though it would be hard 
to say by what process of reasoning this conclusion is arrived at. 
It is so at home, and it is so abroad. With regard to the other 
means of excitement, the Lecture, it has at least the merit of 
being always new. One lecture treads so quickly on the heels 
of another, that none arc remembered ; and the course of this 
month may be safely repeated next, with its charm of novelty 
unbroken, and its interest unabated. 

The fruits of the earth have their growth in corruption. 
Out of the rottenness of these things, there has sprung up in 
Boston a sect of philosophers known as Transcendentalists. On 
inquiring what this appellation might be supposed to signify, I 
was given to understand that whatever was unintelligible would 
be certainly transcendental. Not deriving much comfort from 
this elucidation, I pursued the inquiry still further, and 
found* that the Transcendentalists are followers of my friend 
Mr. Carlyle, or, I should rather say, of a follower of his, 
Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson. This gentleman has written a 
volume of Essays, in which, among much that is dreamy and 
fanciful (if he will pardon me for saying so), there is much 



BOSTON. 



more that is (rue and manly, honest and bold. Transcendent- 
alism has its occasional vagaries (what school has not?) but it 
has good healthful qualities in spite of them; not least among 
the number a hearty disgust of Cant, and an aptitude to detect 
her in all the million varieties of her everlasting wardrobe. 
And therefore if I were a Boslonian, I think I would be a 
Transcendentalism 

The only preacher I heard in Boston was Mr. Taylor, who 
addresses himself peculiarly to seamen, and who was once a 
mariner himself. I found his chapel down among the ship- 
ping, in one of the narrow, old, water-side streets, w ith a gay 
blue flag waving freely from its roof. In the gallery opposite to 
the pulpit were a little choir of male and female singers, a 
violoncello, and a violin. The preacher already sat in the 
pulpit, which w T as raised on pillars, and ornamented behind him 
with painted drapery of a lively and somewhat theatrical 
appearance. He looked a weather-beaten hard-featured man, 
of about six or eight and fifty; with deep lines graven as it 
were into his face, dark hair, and a stern, keen eye. Yet the 
general character of his countenance was pleasant and agree- 
able. 

The service commenced with a hymn, to which succeeded an 
extemporary prayer. It had the fault of frequent repetition, 
incidental to all such prayers; but it was plain and compre- 
hensive in its doctrines, and breathed a tone of general sym- 
pathy and charity, which is not so commonly a characteristic 
of this form of address to the Deity as it might be. That done, 
he opened his discourse taking for his text a passage from the 
Songs of Solomon, laid upon the desk before the commencement 
of the service by some unknown member of the congregation : 
6< Who is this coming up from the wilderness, leaning on the 
arm of her Beloved ! " 

He handled this text in all kinds of ways, and twisted it into 
all manner of shapes; but always ingeniously, and with a rude 
eloquence, well adapted to the comprehension of his hearers. 
J ndeed if I be not mistaken, he studied their sympathies and 
understandings much more than the display of his own powers, 



BOSTON. 



69 



His imagery was alt drawn from the sea, and from the inci- 
dents of a seaman's life ; and was often remarkably good. He 
spoke to them of " that glorious man, Lord Nelson," and of 
Collingwood; and drew nothing in, as the saying is, by the 
head and shoulders, but brought it to bear upon his purpose, 
naturally, and with a sharp mind to its etfect. Sometimes, 
when much excited with his subject, he had an odd way— com- 
pounded of John Bunyan, and Balfour of Burley — of taking his 
great quarto bible under his arm and pacing up and down the 
pulpit with it : looking steadily down, meantime, into the midst 
of the congregation. Thus, when he applied his text to the 
Grst assemblage of his hearers, and pictured the wonder of the 
church at their presumption in forming a congregation among 
themselves, he stopped short with his bible under his arm in 
the manner I have described, and pursued his discourse after 
t man ner : 

" Who are these — who are they — who are these fellows? 
where do they come from? where are they going to? — Come 
from? What's the answer?" — leaning out of the pulpit, and 
pointing downward with his right hand: " From below I" — 
starting back again, and looking at the sailors before him: 
u From below, my brethren. From under the hatches of sin, 
battened down above you by the evil one. That's where you 
came from!" — a walk up and down the pulpit: " and where 
are you going" — stopping abruptly : " where are you going? 
Aloft!" — very softly, and pointing upward: " Aloft!" — 
louder : " aloft I " — louder still. " That's where you are going 
— with a fair wind,— all taut and trim, steering direct for 
Heaven in its glory, where there are no storms or foul wea- 
ther, and where the wicked cease from troubling, and the 
weary are at rest." — Another walk: " That's where you're 
going to, my friends. That's it. That's the place. Thai's the 
port. That's the haven. It's a blessed harbour— still water 
there, in all changes of the winds and tides ; no driving ashore 
upon the rocks, or slipping your cables and running out to sea, 
there: Peace— Peace— Peace— all peace Another walk, 
9Qd patting the bible under J)is left arm ; " What ! these feh 



70 



BOSTON. 



lows arc coming from the wilderness, are they ? Yes. From 
the dreary, blighted wilderness of Iniquity, whose only crop 
is Death. But do they lean upon anything— do they lean upon 
nothing, these poor seamen?"— Three raps upon the bible: 
" Oh yes.— Yes.— They lean upon the arm of their Beloved " 
— three more raps : " upon the arm of their Beloved" — three 
more, and a walk: " Pilot, guiding-star, and compass, all 
in one, to all hands — here it is" — three more : u Here it is. 
They can do their seaman's duty manfully, and be easy in their 
minds in the utmost peril and danger, with this" — two more: 
t( They can come, even these poor fellows can come, from the 
wilderness leaning on the arm of their Beloved, and go up — 
up— up!" — raising his hand higher, and higher, at every re- 
petition of the word, so that he stood with it at last stretched 
above his head, regarding them in a strange, rapt manner, and 
pressing the book triumphantly to his breast, until he gradually 
subsided into some other portion of his discourse. 

I have cited this, rather as an instance of the preacher's ec- 
centricities than his merits, though taken in connection with 
his look and manner, and the character of his audience, even 
this was striking. It is possible, however, that my favourable 
impression of him may have been greatly influenced and 
strengthened, firstly, by his impressing upon his hearers that 
the true observance of religion was not inconsistent with a 
cheerful deportment and an exact discharge of the duties of their 
station, which, indeed, it scrupulously required of them , and 
secondly, by his cautioning them not to set up any monopoly in 
Paradise and its mercies. I never heard these two points so 
wisely touched (if indeed 1 have ever heard them touched at all), 
by any preacher of that kind, before. 

Having passed the time I spent in Boston, in making myself 
acquainted with these things, in settling the course I should 
take in my future travels, and in mixing constantly with its so- 
ciety, I am not aware that I have any occasion to prolong this 
chapter. Such of its social customs as I have not mentioned, 
however, may be told in a very few words. 

The usual dinner hour is two o'clock. A dinner party takes 



BOSTON, 



place at five; and at an evening party, they seldom sup later 
than eleven; so that it goes hard but one gets home, even from 
a rout, by midnight. I never could find out any difference be- 
tween a party at Boston and a party in London, saving that at 
the former place all assemblies are held at more rational hours; 
that the conversation may possibly be a little louder and more 
cheerful ; that a guest is usually expected to ascend to the very 
top of the house to take his cloak off ; that he is certain to see, 
at every dinner, an unusual amount of poultry on the table ; 
and at every supper, at least two mighty bowls of hot stewed 
oysters, in any one of which a half-grown Duke of Clarence 
might be smothered easily. 

There are two theatres in Boston, of good size and construc- 
tion, but sadly in want of patronage. The few ladies who re- 
sort to them, sit, as of right, in the front rows of the boxes. 

There is no smoking-room in any hotel, and there was none 
consequently in ours ; but the bar is a large room with a stone 
fioor, and there people stand and smoke, and lounge about, all 
the -evening : dropping in and out as the humour takes them. 
There too the stranger is initiated into the mysteries of Gin- 
sling, Cocktail, Sangarce, Mint Julep, Sherry-cobbler, Timber 
Doodle, and other rare drinks. The House is full of boarders, 
both married and single, many of whom sleep upon the pre- 
mises, and contract by the week for their board and lodging : 
the charge for which diminishes as they go nearer the sky to 
roost. A public table is laid in a very handsome hall for break- 
fast, and for dinner, and for supper. The party sitting down 
together to these meals will vary in number from one to two 
hundred : sometimes more. The advent of each of these epochs 
in the day is proclaimed by an awful gong, which shakes the 
very window frames as it reverberates through the house, and 
horribly disturbs nervous foreigners. There is an ordinary for 
la'iies, and an ordinary for gentlemen. 

In our private room the cloth could not, for any earthly con- 
sideration, have been laid for dinner wilhout a huge glass dish 
of cranberries in the middle of the table ; and breakfast would 
have been no breakfast unless the principal dish were a dc- 



72 



BOSTON. 



formed beefsteak with a great Hat bono in the centre, swimming 
in hot butter, and sprinkled with the very blackest of all pos- 
sible pepper. Our bedroom was spacious and airy, but (like 
every bedroom on this side of the Atlantic) very bare of furni- 
ture, having no curtains to the French bedstead or to the 
window. It had one unusual luxury, however, in the shape 
of a wardrobe of painted wood, something smaller than an Eng- 
lish watch-box : or if this comparison should be insufficient to 
convey a just idea of its dimensions, they may be estimated from 
the fact of my having lived for fourteen days and nights in the 
firm belief that it was a shower-bath. 



LOWELL. 



CHAPTER THE FOURTH. 



AN AMERICAN RAILROAD. LOWELL AND ITS FACTORY SYSTEM. 

Before leaving Boston, I devoted one day to an excursion to 
Lowell. I assign a separate chapter to this visit ; not because 
I am about to describe it at any great length, but because I 
remember it as a thing by itself, and am desirous that my 
readers should do the same. 

I made acquaintance with an American railroad, on this oc- 
casion, for the first time. As these works arc pretty much 
alike all through the States, their general characteristics arc 
easily described. 

There are no first and second class carriages as with us ; but 
there is a gentlemen's car and a ladies' car : the main distinction 
between which is that in the first, everybody smokes ; and in 
the second, nobody does. As a black man never travels with 
a white one, there is also a negro car ; which is a great blunder- 
ing clumsy chest, such as Gulliver put to sea in, from the king- 
dom of Brobdignag. There is a great deal of jolting, a great 
deal of noise, a great deal of wall, not much window, a loco- 
motive engine, a shriek, and a bell. 

The cars are like shabby omnibusses, but larger : holding 
thirty, forty, fifty, people. The seals, instead of stretching 
from end to end, are plac:d crosswise. Each seat holds two 
persons. There is a long row of them on each side of the ca- 
ravan, a narrow passage up the middle, and a door at both 
ends. In the centre of the carriage there is usually a stove, fed 



7G 



Aft AMERICAN llAlLKOAb. 



with charcoal or anthracite coal 5 which is for the most part 
red-hot. It is insufferably close j and you see the hot air flut- 
tering between yourself and any other object you may happen 
to look at, like the ghost of smoke. 

In the ladies" car, there are a great many gentlemen who 
have ladies with them. There are also a great many ladies 
who have nobody with them : for any lady may travel alone, 
from one end of the United States to the other, and be certain 
of the most courteous and considerate treatment everywhere. 
The conductor or check-taker, or guard, or whatever he may 
be, wears no uniform. He walks up and down the car, and in 
and out of it, as his fancy dictates ; leans against the door with 
his hands in his pockets and stares at you, if you chance to be a 
stranger; or enters into conversation with the passengers about 
him. A great many newspapers are pulled out, and a few of 
them are read. Everybody talks to you, or to anybody else 
who hits his fancy. If you are an Englishman, he expects that 
that railroad is pretty much like an English railroad. If you 
say " No," he says " Yes?" (interrogatively), and asks in what 
respect they differ. You enumerate the heads of difference, one 
by one, and he says "Yes?" (still interrogatively) to each. 
Then he guesses that you don't travel faster in England; and 
on your replying that you do, says l< Yes? " again (still interro- 
gatively), and, it is quite evident, don't believe it. After a 
long pause he remarks, partly to you, and partly to the knob 011 
the top of his stick, that "Yankees are reckoned to be consider- 
able of a go-ahead people too,-" upon which you say u Yes," 
and then he says "Yes" again (affirmatively this time); and 
upon your looking out of window, tells you that behind that hill, 
and some three miles from the next station, there is a clever town 
ina smart lo-ca-tion,| where he expects you have con cluded to 
stop. Your answer in the negative naturally leads to more 
questions in reference to your intended route (always pro- 
nounced rout) ; and wherever you are going, you invariably 
learn that you can't get there without immense difficulty and 
clanger, and that all the groat sights are somewhere else. 

If a lady lake a fancy lojany male passenger's seal, the gentle* 



AN AMERICAN RAILROAD, 



77 



man who accompanies her gives him notice of the fact, and he 
immediately vacates it with greai politeness. Politics are much 
discussed, so are banks, so is cotton. Quiet people avoid the 
question of the Presidency, for there will be a new election in 
three years and a half, and party feeling runs very high : the 
great constitutional feature of this institution being, that di- 
rectly the acrimony of the last election is over, the acrimony of 
the next one begins; which is an unspeakable comfort to all 
strong politicians and true lovers of their country : that is to 
say, to ninety-nine men and boys out of every ninety-nine 
and a quarter. 

Except when a branch road joins the main one, there is sel- 
dom more than one track of rails ; so that the road is very nar- 
row, and the view, where there is a deep culling, by no means 
extensive. When there is not, the character of the scenery is 
always the same. Mile after mile of stunted trees : some hewn 
down by the axe, some blown dow T n by the wind, some half 
fallen and resting on their neighbours, many mere logs half 
hidden in the sw r amp, others mouldered away to spongy chips. 
The very soil of the earth is made up of minute fragments such 
as these ; each pool of stagnant water has its crust of vegetable 
rottenness; on every side there are the boughs, and trunks, and 
stumps of trees, in every possible stage of decay, decomposition, 
and neglect. JNow you emerge for a few brief minutes on an 
open country, glittering with some bright lake or pool, broad as 
many an English river, but so small here that it scarcely has a 
name ; now catch hasty glimpses of a distant town, with its 
clean white houses and their cool piazzas, its prim New Eng- 
land church and schoolhouse; when whir-r-r-r ! almost before 
you have seen them, comes the same dark screen : the stunted 
trees, the stumps, the logs, the stagnant water— all so like 
the last that you seem to have been transported back again by 
magic. 

The train calls at stations in the woods, where the wild im- 
possibility of anybody having the smallest reason to get out, is 
only to be equalled by the apparently desperale hopelessness of 
there being anybody to pot in, Tt rushes across the turnpike 



78 



LOWELL, AND ITS 



road, where there is no gate, np policeman, no signal : nothing 
but a rough wooden arch, on which is painted a When the 
bell rings, look out for the Locomotive." On it whirls headlong, 
dives through the woods again, emerges in the light, clatters 
over frail arches, rumbles upon the heavy ground, shoots be- 
neath a wooden bridge which intercepts the light for a second 
like a wink, suddenly awakens all the slumbering echoes in the 
main street of a large town, and dashes on hap-hazard, pell- 
mell, neck-or-nothing, down the middle of the road. There — 
with mechanics working at their trades, and people leaning 
from their doors and windows, and boys flying kites and playing 
marbles, and men smoking, and women talking, and children 
crawling, and pigs burrowing, and unaccustomed horses plung- 
ing and rearing, close to the very rails — there — on, on, on — 
tears the mad dragon of an engine with its train of cars ; scattering 
in all directions a shower of burning sparks from its wood 
fire; screeching, hissing, yelling, panting ; until at last the 
thirsty monster stops beneath a covered way to drink, the 
people cluster round, and you have time to breathe again. 

I was met at the station at Lowell by a gentleman intimately 
connected with the management of the factories there $ and 
gladly putting myself under his guidance, drove off at once to 
that quarter of the town in which the works, the object of my 
visit, were situated. Although only just of age— for if my re- 
collection serve me, it has been a manufacturing town barely 
one-and-twenty years — Lowell is a large, populous, thriving 
place. Those indications of its youth which first attract the eye, 
give it a quaintness and oddity of character which, to a visitor 
from the old country, is amusing enough. It was a very dirty 
winter's day, and nothing in the whole town looked old to me, 
except the mud, which in some parts was almost knee-deep, 
and might have been deposited there, on the subsiding of the 
waters after the Deluge. In one place, there was a new 
wooden church, which, having no steeple, and being yet un- 
painted, looked like an enormous packing-case without any 
direction upon it. In another there was a large hotel, whose 
walls and colonnades were so crisp, and thin, and slight, that 



FACTORY SYSTEM. 



it had exactly the appearance of being built with cards. I was 
careful not to draw my breath as we passed, and trembled when 
I saw a workman come out upon the roof, lest with one 
thoughtless stamp of his foot he should crush the structure be- 
neath him, and bring it rattling down. The very river that 
moves the machinery in the mills ( for they are all worked by 
water power), seems to acquire a new character from the fresh 
buildings of bright red brick and painted wood among which it 
takes its course ; and to be as light-headed, thoughtless, and 
brisk a young river, in its murmurings and tumblings, as one 
would desire to see. One would swear that every " Bakery," 
"■ Grocery," and " Bookbindery," and other kind of store, took 
its shutters down for the first time, and started in business 
yesterday. The golden pestles and mortars fixed as signs upon 
the sun-blind frames outside the Druggist's, appear to have 
been just turned out of the United States' Mint ; and when I 
saw a baby of some week or ten days old in a woman's arms at 
a street corner, I found myself unconsciously wondering where 
it came from : never supposing for an instant that it could have 
been born in such a young town as that. 

There arc several factories in Lowell, each of which belongs 
to what we should term a Company of Proprietors, but what 
they call in America a Corporation. I w ent over several of 
these ; such as a woollen factory, a carpet factory, and a cotton 
factory s examined them in every part ; and saw them in their 
ordinary working aspect, with no preparation of any kind, or 
departure from their ordinary evcry-day proceedings. I may 
add that I am well acquainted with our manufacturing tow ns 
in England, and have visited many mills in Manchester and 
elsewhere in the same manner. 

I happened to arrive at the first factory just as the dinner 
hour was over, and the girls were returning to their work ; 
indeed the stairs of the mill were thronged with them as I 
ascended. They were ail well dressed, but not to my thinking 
above their condition ; for I like to see the humbler classes of 
society careful of their dress and appearance, and even, if they 
please, decorated with such little trinkets as come within the 



80 



LOWELL, AM) ITS 



compass of their means. Supposing it confined w ithin reason 
able limits > I would always encourage this kind of pride, as a 
worthy element of self-respect, in any person I employed ; and 
should no more be deterred from doing so, because some 
wretched female referred her fall to a love of dress, than I 
would allow my construction of the real intent and meaning of 
the Sabbath to be influenced by any warning to the well- 
disposed, founded on his back-slidings on that particular day, 
which might emanate from the rather doubtfo 1 authority of a 
murderer in Newgate. 

These girls, as I have said, were all well dressed : and that 
phrase necessarily includes extreme cleanliness. They had 
serviceable bonnets, good warm cloaks, and shawls ; and were 
not above clogs and pattens. Moreover, there were places in 
the mill in which they could deposit these things without in- 
jury ; and there were conveniences for washing. They were 
healthy in appearance, many of them remarkably so, and had 
the manners and deportment of young women : not of degraded 
brutes of burden. If I had seen in one of those mills (but I 
did not, though I looked for something of this kind with a sharp 
eye), the most lisping, mincing, affected, and ridiculous young 
creature that my imagination could suggest, I should have 
thought of ihe careless, moping, slatternly, degraded, dull 
reverse (I have seen that), and should have been still well 
pleased to look upon her. 

The rooms in which they worked, were as well ordered as 
themselves. In the windows of some, ihere were green plants, 
which were trained to s' ade the glass; in all, there was as 
much fresh air, cleanliness, and comfort, as the nature of the 
occupation would possibly admit of. Out of so large a number 
of females, many of whom were only then just verging upon 
womanhood, it may be reasonably supposed that some were 
delicate and fragile in appearance : no doubt there were. But 
I solemnly declare, that from all the crowd I saw in the dif- 
ferent factories that dav, I cannot reeal or separate one young 
face that gave me a painful impression ; net one young girl 
whom, assuming it to be matter of necessity that she shoulc} 



FACTORY SYSTEM. 



81 



gain her daily bread by the labour of her hands, I would have 
removed from those works if I had had the power. 

They reside in various boarding-houses near at hand. The 
owners of the mills are particularly careful to allow no persons 
to enter upon the possession of these houses, whose characters 
have not undergone the most searching and thorough inquiry. 
Any complaint that is made against them, by the boarders, or 
by any one else, is fully investigated ; and if good ground of 
complaint be shown to exist against them, they arc removed, 
and their occupation is handed over to some more deserving 
person. There are a few children employed in these factories, 
but no many. The laws of the State forbid their working more 
than nine months in the year, and require that they be educated 
during the other three. For this purpose there are schools in 
Lowell ; and there are churches and chapels of various persua- 
sions, in which the young women may observe that form of 
Worship in which they have been educated 

At some distance from the factories, and on the highest and 
pleasantest ground in the neighbourhood, stands their hospital, 
or boarding-house for the sick : it is the best house in those 
parts, and was built by an eminent merchant for his own resi- 
dence. Like that institution at Boston which I have before 
described, it is not parcelled out into wards, but is divided into 
convenient chambers, each of which has all the comforts of a 
very comfortable home. The principal medical attendant resi- 
des under the same roof ; and were th<? patients, members of 
his own family, they could not be better cared for, or attended 
with greater gentleness and consideration. The weekly charge 
in this establishment for each female patient is three dollars, or 
twelve shillings English ; but no girl employed by any of the 
corporations is ever excluded for want of the meansof payment. 
That they do not very often want the means, may be gathered 
from the fact, that in July 1841 no fewer than nine hundred 
and seventy-eight of these girls were depositors in the LoweW 
Savings Bank : the amount of whose joint savings was estima- 
ted at one hundred thousand dollars, or twenty thousand English 
pounds. 

C 



82 



LOWELL, AND ITS 



I am now going to state three facts, which will startle a 
large class of readers on this side of the Atlantic, very much. 

Firstly, there is a joint-stock piano in a great many of the 
boarding-houses. Secondly, nearly all these young ladies 
subscribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up 
among themselves a periodical called The Lowell Offering, 
" A repository of original articles, written exclusively by fema- 
les actively employed in the mills," — which is duly printed, 
published, and sold ; and whereof I brought away from Lowell 
four hundred good solid pages, which I have read from be- 
ginning to end. 

The large class of readers, startled by these facts, will exclaim, 
with one voice, ''How very preposterous!" On my diferen- 
tially inquiring why, they will answer, "These things are above 
their station." In reply to that objection, I would beg to ask 
what their station is. 

It is their station to work. And they do work. They labour 
in these mills, upon an average,, twelve hours a day, which is 
unquestionably w ork, and pretty tight work too. Perhaps it is 
above their station to indulge in such amusements, on any terms. 
Are we quite sure that we in England have not formed our 
ideas of the a station ;; of working people, from accustoming 
ourselves to the contemplation of that class as they are, and 
not as they might be ? I think that if we examine our own 
feelings, we shall find that the pianos, and the circulating 
libraries, and even the*Lowell Offering, startle us by their no- 
velty, and not by their bearing upon any abstract question of 
right or wrong. 

For myself, I know no station in which, the occupation of 
to-day cheerfully done and the occupation of to-morrow cheer- 
fully looked to, any one of these pursuits is not most humanizing 
and laudable. I know no station which is rendered more endur- 
able to the person in it, or more safe to the person out of it, by 
having ignorance for its associate. I know no station which has 
a right to monopolize the means of mutual instruction, im- 
provement, and rational entertainment j or w r hich has ever 
continued to be a station very long, after seeking to do so. 



FACTORY SYSTEM. 



83 



Of the merits of the Lowell Offering as a literary production, 
I will only observe, putting entirely out of sight the fact of the 
articles having been written by these girls after the arduous 
labours of the day, that it will compare advantageously w ith 
a great many English Annuals. It is pleasant to And that many 
of its Tales are of the Mills and of those who work in them j 
that they inculcate habits of self-denial and contentment, and 
teach good doctrines of enlarged benevolence. A strong feeling 
for the beauties of nature, as displayed in the solitudes the 
writers have left at home, breathes through its pages like whole- 
some village air ; and though a circulating liorary is a favour- 
able school for the study of such topics, it has very scant allusion 
to Gne clothes, fine marriages, Gne houses, or Gne life. Some 
persons might object to the papers being signed occasionally 
with rather Gne names, but this is an American fashion. One 
of the provinces of the state legislature of Massachusetts is to 
alter ugly names into pretty ones, as the children improve upon 
the tastes of their parents. These changes costing little or 
nothing, scores of Mary Annesare solemnly converted intoBe- 
velinas every session. 

It is said that on the occasion of a visit from General Jackson 
or General Harrison to this town ( I forget which, but it is not 
to the purpose), he walked through three miles and a half of 
these young ladies, all dressed out with parasols and silk stock- 
ings. ButasI am not aware that any worse consequence ensued, 
than a sudden looking-up of all the parasols and silk stockings 
in the market ; and perhaps the bankruptcy of some speculative 
New Englander who bought them all up at any price, in expect- 
ation of a demand that never came ; I set no great store by the 
circumstance. 

In this brief account of Lowell, and inadequate expression of 
the gratiGcation it yielded me, and cannot fail to afford to any 
foreigner to whom the condition of such people at home is a sub- 
ject of interest and anxious speculation, I have carefully ab- 
stained from drawing a comparison between these factories 
andjthose of our own land. Many of the circumstances whose 
strong influence has been at work for years in our manufacturing 



St 



LOWELL. 



towns have not arisen here ; and there is no manufacturing po- 
pulation in Lowell, so to speak : for these girls ( often the 
daughters of small farmers ) come from other States, remain a 
few years in the mills, and then go home for good. 

The contrast would be a strong one, for it would be between 
the Good and Evil, the living light and deepest shadow . I abstain 
from it, because I deem it just to do so. But I only the more 
earnestly adjure all those whose eyes may rest on these pages, 
to pause and reflect upon the difference between this town and 
those great haunts of desperate misery : to call to mind, if they 
can in the midst of party strife and squabble, the efforts that 
must be made to purge them of their suffering and danger : 
and last, and foremost, to remember how the precious Time is 
rushing by. 

I returned at night by the same railroad and in the same kind 
of car. One of the passengers being exceedingly anxious to 
expound at great length to my companion (not to me, of course) 
the true principles on which books of travel in America should 
be written by Englishmen, I feigned to fall asleep. But glancing 
all the way out at window from the corners of my eyes, I found 
abundance of entertainment for the rest of the ride in watching 
the effects of the w r ood fire, which had been invisible in the 
morning but were now brought out in full relief by the dark- 
ness : for we were travelling in a whirlwind of bright sparks, 
which showered about us like a storm of fiery snow. 



WORCESTER TO NEW YORK. 



CHAPTER THE FIFTH. 



WORCESTER. THE CONNECTICUT RIVER. IURTF0RD. NEW HAVEN. 
TO NEW YORK. 

Leaving Boston on the afternoon of Saturday the fifth of Fe- 
bruary, we proceeded by another railroad to Worcester : a 
pretty New England low n, where we had arranged to remain 
under the hospitable roof of the Governor of the State, until 
.Monday morning. 

These towns and cities of New England (many of which 
would be villages in Old England), areas favourable specimens 
of rural America, as their people are of rural Americans. The 
well-trimmed lawns and green meadow s of home are not there j 
and the grass, compared with our ornamental plots and pas- 
tures, is rank, and rough, and wild : but delicate slopes of land, 
gently-swelling hills, wooded valleys, and slender streams, 
abound. Every little colony of houses has its church and 
school-house peeping from among the white roofs and shady 
trees; every house is the whitest of the white ; every Venetian 
blind the greenest of the green ; every fine day's sky the bluest 
of the blue. A sharp dry wind and a slight frost had so 
hardened the roads when we alighted at Worcester, that their 
furrowed tracks were like ridges of granite. There was the 
usual asrect of newness on every object, of course. All the 
buildings looked as if they had been built and painted that 
morning, and could be lakes down on Monday with very little 
trouble. In the keen evening air, every sharp outline looked 



88 



HARTFORD. 



a hundred times sharper than ever. The clean cardboard co- 
lonnades had no more perspective than a Chinese bridge on a 
tea-cup, and appeared equally well calculated for use. The 
razor-like edges of the detached cottages seemed to cut the very 
ivind as it whistled against them, and to send it smarting on 
its way with a shriller cry than before. Those slightly-built 
wooden dwellings behind which the sun was setting with a 
brilliant lustre, could be so looked through and through, that 
the idea of any inhabitant being able to hide himself from the 
public gaze, or to have any secrets from the public eye, was not 
entertainable for a moment. Even where a blazing tire shone 
through the uncurtained windows of some distant house, it had 
the air of being newly-lighted, and of lacking warmth; and 
instead of awakening thoughts of a snug chamber, bright with 
faces that first saw the light round that same hearth, and ruddy 
with warm hangings, it came upon one suggestive of the smell 
of new mortar and damp walls. 

So I thought, at least, that evening. Next morning when 
the sun was shining brightly, and the clear church bells were 
ringing, and sedate people in their best clothes enlivened the 
pathway near at hand and dotted the distant thread of road,, 
there was a pleasant Sabbath peacelulness on everything, which 
it was good to feel. It would have been the better for an old 
church ; better still for some old graves ; but as it w as, a whole- 
some repose and tranquillity pervaded the scene, which after 
the restless ocean and the hurried city, had a doubly grateful 
influence on the spirits. 

We went on next morning, still by railroad, to Springfield, 
From that place to Hartford, whither we wercSbound, is a 
distance of only five-and-twenty miles, but at thaV time of the 
year the roads were so bad that the journey would probably 
have occupied ten or twelve hours. Fortunately, however, the 
winter having been unusually mild, the Connecticut River 
was " open," or, in other words, not frozen. The captain of 
a small steamboat was going o make his first trip for the 
season that day (the second February trip, I believe, within 
the memory of man), and only waited for us to go on board. 



HARTFORD. 



89 



Accordingly, we went on board, with as little delay as might 
be. He was as good as his word, and started directly. 

It certainly was not called a small steamboat without reason. 
I omitted to ask the question, but I should think it must have 
been of about half a pony power. Mr. Paap, the celebrated 
Dwarf, might have lived and died happily in the cabin, which 
was fitted with common sash-windows like an ordinary 
dwelling-house. These windows had bright-red curtains, 
too, hung on slack strings across the lower panes; so that it 
looked like the parlour of a Lilliputian public-house, which had 
got afloat in a flood or some other water accident, and was 
drifting nobody knew where. But even in this chamber there 
was a rocking-chair. It would be impossible to get on any- 
where, in America, without a rocking-chair. 

I am afraid to tell how many feet short this vessel was, or 
how many feet narrow : to apply the words length and width 
to such measurement would be a contradiction in terms. But 
I may state that we all kept the middle of the deck, lest the 
boat should unexpectedly tip over; and that the machinery, by 
some surprising process of condensation, worked between it 
and the keel : the whole forming a warm sandwich, about 
three feet thick. 

It rained all day as I once thought it never did rain anywhere, 
hut in the Highlands of Scotland. The river was full of float- 
ing blocks of ice, which were constantly crunching and cracks 
ing under us ; and the depth of water, in the course we took 
to avoid the larger masses, carried down the middle of the 
river by the current, did not exceed a few inches. Never-^ 
theless, wo moved onw T ard, dexterously 5 and being w 7 ell wrap- 
ped up, bade defiance to the weather, and enjoyed the journey . 
The Connecticut River is a fine stream ; and the banks in sum- 
mer-time are, I have no doubt, beautiful : at all events, I was 
told so by a young lady in the cabin ; and she should be a judge 
of beauty, if the possession of a quality include the appreciation 
of it, for a more beautiful creature I never looked upon. 

After two hours and a half of this odd travelling (including 
a stoppage at a small town, where we were saluted by a gun 



90 



HARTFORD. 



considerably bigger than our own chimney), we reached Hart- 
ford, and straightway repaired to an extremely comfortable 
hotel : except, as usual, in the article of bedrooms, which, in 
almost every place we visited, were very conducive to early 
rising. 

We tarried here, four days. The town is beautifully situated 
in a basin of green hills \ the soil is rich, well-wooded, and 
carefully improved. It is the seat of the local legislature of 
Connecticut, which sage body enacted, in bygone times, the 
renowned code of "Blue Laws," in virtue whereof, among 
other enlightened provisions, any citizen who could be proved 
to have kissed his wife on Sunday, was punishable, I believe, 
with the stocks. Too much of the old Puritan spirit exists in 
these parts to the present hour ; but its influence has not tended, 
that I know, to make the people less hard in their bargains, or 
more equal in their dealings. As I never heard of its work- 
ing that effect anywhere else, I infer that it never will, here. 
Indeed, I am accustomed, with reference to great professions 
and|severe faces, to judge of the goods of the other w r orld 
prelty^much as I judge of the goods of this ; and whenever I see 
a dealer in such commodities with too great a display of them 
in his window, I doubt the quality of the article within. 

In Hartford stands the famous oak in which the charter of 
Ring Charles was hidden. It is now inclosed in a gentleman's 
garden. In the State-house is the charter itself. I found the 
courts of law here, just the same as at Boston ; the public 
Institutions almost as good. The Insane Asylum is admirably 
conducted, and so is the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. 

I very much questioned within myself, as I walked through 
the Insane Asylum, whether I should have known the atten- 
dants from the patients, but for the few words which passed 
between the former, and the Doctor, in reference to the per- 
sons under their charge. Of course I limit this remark merely 
to their looks ; for the conversation of the mad people was mad 
enough. 

There was one little prim old lady, of very smiling and good- 
humoured appearance, wh j came sidling up to me from the 



HARTFORD. 



91 



end of a long passage, and with a curtsey of inexpressible con- 
descension . propounded this unaccountable inquiry : 

" Does Pontefract still flourish, Sir, upon the soil of En- 
gland 5 "* 

" He does. Ma'am." I rejoined. 

44 When you last saw him, Sir, he was—" 

" Well. Ma'am," said I, " extremely well. He begged 
me to present his compliments. I never saw him looking 
belter." 

At this, the old lady was very much delighted. After glanc- 
ing at me for a moment, at if to be quite sure that I was se- 
rious in my respectful air, she sidled back some paces ; sidled 
forward again ; made a sudden skip at Nvhich I precipitately 
retreated a step or two) ; and said : 

" I am au antediluvian, Sir." 

I thought the best thing to say was, that I had suspected as 
much from the first. Therefore I said so. 

" It is an extremely proud and pleasant thing, Sir, to be an 
antediluvian," said the old lady. 

" I should think it was, Ma'am,"' I rejoined. 

The old lady kissed her hand, gave another skip, smirked and 
sidled down the gallery in a most extraordinary manner, and 
ambled gracefully into her own bed-chamber. 

In another part of the building, there was a male patient in 
bed, very much flushed and heated. 

M Well! " said he, starting up, and pulling off his night-cap : 
" It's all settled, at last. I have arranged it with queen Vic- 
toria." 

" Arranged what? " asked the Doctor. 

" Why, that business," passing his hand wearily across his 
forehead, " about the siege of New York." 

" Oh! " said I, like a man suddenly enlightened. For he 
looked at me for an answer. 

" Yes. Every house without a signal will be fired upon by 
the British troops. No harm will be done to the others. No 
harm at all. Those that want to be safe, must hoist flags.That s 
all they'll have to do. They must hoist flags." 



92 



HARTFORD. 



Even while he was speaking, he seemed, I thought, to hare 
some faint idea that his talk was incoherent. Directly he had 
said these words, he lay down again 5 gave a kind of groan ; and 
covered his hot head with the blankets. 

There was another : a young man, whose madness was love 
and music. After playing on the accordion a march he had 
composed, he was very anxious that I should walk into his 
chamber, which I immediately did. 

By way of being very knowing, and humouring him to the 
top of his bent, I went to the window, which commanded a 
beautiful prospect, and remarked, Avith an address upon which 
I greatly plumed myself : 

M What a delicious country you have about these lodgings 
of yours ! " 

u Poh!" said he, moving his fingers carelessly over the 
notes of his instrument : " TVell enough for such an Institu- 
tion as this /" 

I don't think I was ever so taken aback in all my life. 
" I come here just for a whim/' he said coolly. " That's 
all. " 

" Oh! That's all!" said I. 

" Yes. That's all. The Doctor's a smart man. He quite 
enters into it. It's a joke of mine. I like it for a time. You 
needn't mention it, but I think I shall go out next Tuesday ! " 

I assured him that I would consider our inlcrvicv^ perfectly 
confidential ; and rejoined the Doctor. As we were passing 
through a gallery on our way out, a well-dressed lady, of quiet 
and composed manners, came up, and proffering a slip of paper 
and a pen, begged that I would oblige her with an autograph. 
I complied, and we parted. 

" I think I remember having had a few interviews like that, 
with ladies out of doors. I hope she is not mad ?". 

" Yes." 

" On what subject? Autographs ?" 
u No. She hears voices in the air." 
4 ; Well ! " thought I, " it would be well if we could shut up 
a few false prophets of these later times, who have professed to 



NEW HAVEN. 



)3 



do the same ; and I should like to try the experiment on a 
Mormonist or two to begin with." 

In this place , there is the best Jail for untried offenders in 
the world. There is also a very well-ordered State prison, 
arranged upon the same plan as that at Boston , except that 
here , there is always a sentry on the wall with a loaded gun. 
It contained at that time about two hundred prisoners. A spot 
was shown me in the sleeping ward , where a w atchman was 
murdered some years since in the dead of night , in a desperate 
attempt to escape , made by a prisoner w ho had broken from 
his cell. A woman , too , was pointed out to me , w ho , for the 
murder of her husband , had been a close prisoner for sixteen 
years . 

" Do you think, " I asked of my conductor, u that after so 
very long an imprisonment , she has any thought -or hope of 
ever regaining her liberty ?" 

" Oh dear yes," he answered. " To be sure she has." 

" She has no chance of obtaining it, I suppose?" 

"Well, I don't know r :" which, by the bye, is a national 
answer. " Her friends mistrust her." 

" What have they to do with it?" I naturally inquired. 

"Well, they won't petition." 

" But if they did, they couldn't get her out, I suppose ?" 
" Well, not the first time, perhaps, nor yet the second, but 
tiring and wearying for a few years might do it." 
" Does that ever do it?" 

" Why yes, that '11 do it sometimes. Political friends '11 do it 
sometimes. It's pretty often done, one way or another." 

I shall always entertain a very pleasant and grateful recol- 
lection of Hartford. It is a lovely place, and I had many friends 
there, whom I can never remember with indifference. We left 
it with no little regret on the evening of Friday the 11th, and 
travelled that night by railroad to New Haven. Upon the way, 
the guard and I were formally introduced to each other (as we 
usually were on such occasions), and exchanged a variety of 
small- talk. We reached Nevf Haven at about eight o'clock, 



NEW HAVEN TO NEW YORK. 



after a journey of three hours, and put up for the night in the 
best inn. 

New Haven, known also as the City of Elms, is a fine town. 
Many of its streets (as its alias sufficiently imports) are planted 
with rows of grand old elm-trees ; and the same natural orna- 
ments surround Yale College, an establishment of considerable 
eminence and reputation. The various departments of this In- 
stitution are erected in a kind of park or common in the middle 
of the town, where they are dimly visible among the shadow- 
ing trees. The effect is very like that of an old cathedral yard 
in England ; and when their branches are in full leaf, must be 
extremely picturesque. Even in the winter time, these groups 
of well-grown trees, clustering among the busy streets and 
houses of a thriving city, have a very quaint appearance : 
seeming to bring about a kind of compromise between town 
and country ; as if each had met the other half-way, and shaken 
hands upon it ; which is at once novel and pleasant. 

After a night's rest, v e rose early, and in good time went 
down to the wharf, and on board the packet New York, for 
New York. This was the first American steamboat of any size 
that I had seen ; and certainly to an English eye it was infinitely 
less like a steamboat than a huge^fioating-bath. I could hardly 
persuade myself, indeed, but that the bathing establishment off 
Westminster Bridge, which I left a baby, had suddenly grown 
to an enormous size ; run away from home ; and set up in 
foreign parts as a steamer. Being in America too, which our 
vagabonds do so particularly favour, it seemed the more 
probable. 

The great difference in appearance between these packets 
and ours, is, that there is so much of them out of the water : 
the main-deck being enclosed on all sides, and filled with casks 
and goods, like any second or third floor in a stack of ware- 
houses ; and the promenade or hurricane-deck being a-top of 
that again. A part of the machinery is always above this deck ; 
where the connecting-rod, in a strong and lofty frame, is seen 
working away like an iron top-sawyer. There is seldom any 
mast or tackle : nothing aloft b. 1 1 ,vo tall black chimneys. The 



IS'EW HAVEN TO NEW YORK. 



9c 



man at the helm is shut up in a little house in the fore part of 
the boat ;the wheel being connected with the rudder by iron 
chains, working the whole length of the deck) ; and the passen- 
gers, unless the weather be very fine indeed, usually congre- 
gate below. Directly you have left the wharf, all the life, and 
stir, and bustle of a packet cease. You wonder for a long time 
how she goes on, for there seems to be nobody in charge of 
her ; and when another of these dull machines comes splashing 
by, you feel quite indignant with it, as a sullen, cumbrous, 
ungraceful, unshiplike leviathan : quite forgetting that the 
vessel you are on board of, is its very counterpart. 

There is always a clerk s office onjthe lower deck, where you 
pay your fare; a ladies' cabin; baggage and stowage rooms ; 
engineer's room; and in short a great variety of perplexities 
which render the discovery of the gentlemen's cabin, a matter 
of some difficulty. It often occupies the whole length of the 
boat (as it did in this case), and has three or four tiers of berths 
on each side. When I first descended into the cabin of the New 
Vork, it looked, in my unaccustomed eyes, about as long as 
the Burlington Arcade. 

The Sound which has to be crossed on this passage, is not 
always a very safe or pleasant navigation, and has been the 
scene of some unfortunate accidents. It was a wet morning, 
aud very misty, and we soon lost sight of land. The day was 
calm, however, and brightened towards noon. After exhaust- 
ing (with good help from a friend) the larder, and the stock of 
bottled beer, I lay down to sleep : being very much tired with 
the fatigues of yesterday. But I awoke from my nap in time to 
hurry up, and see Hell Gate, the Hog's Back, the Frying Pan, 
and other notorious localities, attractive to all readers of famous 
Diedrich Knickerbocker's History. We were now in a narrow 
channel, with sloping banks on either side, besprinkled with 
pleasant villas, and made refreshing to the sight by turf and 
trees. Soon we shot in quick succession, past a lighthouse ; a 
madhouse (how the lunatics flung up their caps, and roared in 
sympathy with the headlong engine and the driving tide!); a 
jail; and other buildings; and so emerged into a noble bay. 



NEW HAVEN TO NEW YORK. 



whose waters sparkled in the now cloudless sunshine like Na- 
ture's eyes turned up to Heaven. 

Then there lay stretched out before us, to the right, confused 
heaps of buildings, with here and there a spire or steeple, 
looking down upon the herd below ; and here and there again, a 
cloud of lazy smoke ; and in the foreground a forest of ships' 
masts, cheery with flapping sails and waving flags. Crossing 
from among them to the opposite shore, were steam ferry-boats 
laden with people, coaches, horses, waggons, baskets, boxes -. 
crossed and recrossed by other ferry-boats : all travelling to 
and fro : and never idle. Stately among these restless Insects, 
were two or three large ships, moving with slow majestic pace, 
as creatures of a prouder kind, disdainful of their puny jour- 
neys, and making for the broad sea. Beyond, were shining 
heights, and islands in the glancing river, and a distance scarcely 
less blue and bright than the sky it seemed to meet. The city's 
1mm and buzz, the clinking of capstans, the ringing of bells, 
the barking of dogs, the clattering of wheels, tingled in the 
listening ear. All of which life and stir, coming across the 
stirring water, caught new life and animation from its free 
companionship; and, sympathising with its buoyant spirits, 
glistened as it seemed in sport upon its surface, and hemmed 
the vessel round, and plashed the water high about her sides, 
and, floating her gallantly into the dock, flew off again to wel- 
come other comers, and speed before them to the busy Port. 



NEW YORK. 



7 



CHAPTER THE SIXTH. 



new york; 

The beautiful metropolis of America is by no means so clean 
a city as Boston, but many of its streets have the same charac- 
teristics; except that the houses are not quite so fresh-coloured, 
the sign-boards are not quite so gaudy, the gilded letters not so 
golden, the bricks not quite so red, the stone not quite so white, 
the blinds and area railings not quite so green, the knobs and 
plates upon the strcetdoors, not quite so bright and twinkling. 
There are many bye -streets, almost as neutral in clean 
colours, and positive in dirty one?, as bye-streets in London ; 
and there is one quarter, commonly called the Five Points, 
which, in respect of filth and wretchedness, may be safely 
backed against Seven Dials, or any other part of famed St. 
Giles's. 

The great promenade and thoroughfare, as most people know, 
is Broadway; a w ide and bustling street, which, from the Bat- 
tery Gardens to its opposite termination in a country road, may 
be four miles long. Shall we sit down in an upper lloor of the 
Carlton House Hotel (situated in the best part of this main 
artery of New York), and when we arc tired of looking down 
upon the life below, sally forth arm in arm, and mingle with 
the stream ? 

Warm weather ! The sun strikes upon our heads at this open 
"Window , as though its rays were concentrated through a burn- 



100 



NEW \OKK. 



ing-glass ; but the day is in its zenith, and the season an unusual 
one. Was there ever such a sunny street at this Broadway ! 
The pavement stones are polished with the tread of feel until 
they shine again ; the red bricks of the houses might be yet in 
the dry hot kilns ; and the roofs of those omnibuses look as 
though, if water were poured on them, they would hiss and 
smoke, and smell like half-quenched fires. No stint of omnibuses 
here ! Half a dozen have gone by within as many minutes. 
Plenty of hackney cabs and coaches too ; gigs, phaetons, large- 
wheeled tilburies, and private carriages — rather of a clumsy 
make, and not very different from the public vehicles, but built 
for the heavy roads beyond the city pavement. Negro coach- 
men and white ; in straw hats, black hats, white hats, glazed 
caps, fur caps ; in coats of drab, black, brown, green, lue, 
nankeen, striped jean and linen ; and there, in that one instance 
(look while it passes, or it will be too late), in suits of livery. 
Some southern republican that, y/ho puts his blacks in uniform, 
and sw ells with Sultan pomp and power. Yonder, where that 
phaeton with the well-clipped pair of grays has stopped — 
standing at their heads now — is a Yorkshire groom, who has 
not been very long in those parts, and looks sorrowfully round 
for a companion pair of top-boots, which he may traverse the 
city half a year without meeting. Heaven save the ladies, how 
they dress ! We have seen moreco lours in these ten minutes, 
than we should have seen elsewhere, in as many days. What 
various parasols ! what rainbow silks and satins! what pinking 
of thin stockings, and pinching of thin shoes, and fluttering of 
ribbons and silk tassels, and display of rich cloaks with gaudy 
hoods and linings ! The young gentlemen are fond, you see, of 
turning down thir shirt-collars and cultivating their whiskers, 
especially undler the chin ; but they cannot approach the ladies 
in their dress or bearing, being, to say the truth, humanity of 
quite another sort. Byrons of the desk and counter, pass on, 
and let us see what kind of men those are behind ye : those two 
labourers in holiday clothes, of whom one carries in his hand a 
crumpled scrap of paper from which he tries to spell out a hard 
name, while the other looks about for it on all the doors and 
windows. 



NEW YORK. 



101 



Irishmen both ! You might know them, if they were masked, 
by their long-tailed blue coats and bright buttons, and their drab 
trousers, which they wear like men well used to working 
dresses, who are easy in no others. It would be hard to keep 
your model republics going, without the countrymen of those 
two labourers. For who else would dig, and delve, and drudge, 
and do domestic work, and make canals and roads, and execute 
great lines of Internal Improvement ! Irishmen both, and sorely 
puzzled too, t find out what they seek. Let us go down, and 
help them, for the love of home, and that spirit ofliberty which 
admits of honest service to honest men, and honest work for 
honest bread, no matter what it be. 

That's well ! We have got at the right address at last, though 
it is written in strange characters truly, and might have been 
scrawled with the blunt handle of the spade the writer better 
knows the use of, than a pen. Their way lies yonder, but what 
business takes them there? They carry savings : to hoard up? 
No. They arc brothers, those men. One crossed the sea 
alone, and working very hard for one half year, and living 
harder, saved funds enough to bring the other out. That done, 
they worked together, side by side, contentedly sharing hard 
labour and hard living for another term, and then their sisters 
came, and then another brother, and, lastly, their old mother. 
And what now? Why, the poor old crone is restless in a 
strange land, and yearns to lay her bones, she says, among her 
people in the old graveyard at home : and so they go to pay 
her passage back : and God help her and them, and every 
simple heart, and all who turn to the Jerusalem of their 
younger days, and have an altar- fire upon the cold hearth of 
their fathers. 

This narrow thoroughfare, baking and blistering in the sun, 
is Wall Street : the Stock Exchange and Lombard Street of 
New York. Many a rapid fortune has been made in this street, 
and many a no less rapid ruin. Some of these very merchants 
whom you see hanging about here now, have locked up Money 
in their strong-boxes, like the man in the Arabian Nights, and 
opening them again, have found but withered leaves. Below, 



10? 



NEW YORK. 



here by the w iter side, where the bowsprits of ships stretch 
across the footway, and almost thrust themselves into the 
windows, lie the noble American vessels which have made 
their Packet Service the finest in the world. They have 
brought hither the foreigners who abound in all the streets : 
not perhaps, that there are more here, than in other com- 
mercial cities : but elsewhere, they have particular haunts, and 
you must find them out ; here, they pervade the town. 

We must cross Broadway again,- gaining some refreshment 
from the heat, in the sight of the great blocks of clean ice w hich 
are being carried into shops and bar-rooms; and the pine-apples 
and water-melons profusely displayed for sale. Fine streets of 
spacious houses here, you see! — Wall Street has furnished 
and dismantled many of them very often — and here a deep 
green leafy square. Be sure that is a hospitable house with 
inmates to be affectionately remembered always, where they 
have the open door and pretty show r of plants within, and 
where the child with laughing eyes is peeping out of window 
at the little dog below. You wonder what may be the use of 
this tall flagstaff in the bye street, w ith something like Liberty's 
head-dress on its top : so do I. But there is a passion for tall 
flagstaff's hereabout, and you may see its twin brother in five 
minutes, if you have a mind. 

Again across Broadway, and so— passing from the many- 
coloured crowd and glittering shops— into another long main 
street, the Bowery. A railroad yonder, see, where two stout 
horses trot along, drawing a score or two of people and a great 
wooden ark, with ease. The stores are poorer here ; the pas- 
sengers less gay. Clothes ready-mnde, and meat ready -cooked, 
are to be bought in these parts ; and the lively w hirl of carriages 
is exchanged for the deep rumble of carts and waggons. These 
signs which are so plentiful, in shape like river buoys, or small 
balloons, hoisted by cords to poles, and dangling there, an- 
nounce, as you may sec by looking up, " Oysters is every 
Style." They tempt the hungry most at night, for then dull 
candies glimmering inside, illuminate these dainty words, and 
make the mouths of idlers water, as they read and linger. 



NEW YORK. 



What is this dismal-fronted pile of bastard Egyptian, like an 
enchanter's palace in a melodrama !— a famous prison, called 
The Tombs. Shall we go in? 

So. Along narrow lofty building, stove- heated as usual, 
with four galleries, one above the other, going round it, and 
communicating by stairs. Between the two sidesof each gallery, 
and in its centre, a bridge, for thegreater convenience of crossing. 
On each of these bridges sits a man : dozing or reading, or 
talking to an idle companion. On each tier, are two opposite 
rows of small iron doors. They look like furnace doors, but 
are cold and black, as though the fires within had all gone out. 
Some two or three are open, and women, with drooping heads 
bent down, are talking to the inmates. The whole is lighted by 
a skylight, but it is fast closed i and from the roof there dangle, 
limp and drooping, two useless windsails. 

A man with keys appears, to show us round. A good-looking 
fellow, and, in his way, civil and obliging. ' 

•* Are those black doors the cells?'" 

"Yes." 

"Are they all full?" 

" Wefl, they're pretty nigh full, and that's fact, and no two 
ways about it." 

M Those at the bottom are unwholesome, surely?" 

"Why, we do only put coloured people in 'em. That's the 
truth." 

M When do the prisoners take exercise ?" 
"Well, they do without it pretty much." 
" Do they never walk in the yard?" 
" Considerable seldom." 
u Sometimes, I suppose?" 

" Well, it's rare they do. They keep pretty bright without 
it." 

"But suppose a man were here for a twelvemonth. I know 
this is only a prison for criminals who are charged with grave 
offences, while they are awaiting their trial, or are under 
remand, but the law here, affords criminals many means of 
delay. What with motions for new trial , and in arrest of 



104 



NEW YORK. 



judgment, and wh.it not, a prisoner might be here for twelve 
months, I take it, might he not?" 
" Well, I guess he might." 

" Do you mean to say that in all that time he would never 
come out at that little iron door, for exercise?" 
" He might walk some, perhaps — not much." 
" Will you open one of the doors?" 
"All, if you like." 

The fastenings jar and rattle, and oneof thedoors turnsslowly 
on its hinges. Let us look in. A small bare cell, into which 
the light enters through a high chink in the wall. There is a 
rude means of washing, a table, and a bedstead. Upon the latter, 
sits a man of sixty, reading. He looks up for a moment ; gives 
an impatient dogged shake ; and fixes his eyes upon his book 
again. As we withdraw our heads, the door closes on him, 
and is fastened as before. This man has murdered his wife, 
and will probably be hanged. 

" How long has he been here?" 

" A month." 

"When will he be tried ?" 

"Next term." 

' ' When is that?" 

"Next month." 

" In England, if a man be under sentence of death, even , he 
has air and exercise at certain periods of the day." 
" Possible?" 

With what stupendous and untranslatable coolness he says this, 
and how loungingly he leads on to the women's side: making, as 
he goes, a kind of iron castanet of the key and the stair -rail ! 

Each cell door on this side has a square aperture in it. Some 
of the women peep anxiously through it at the sound of footsteps ; 
others shrink away in shame. —For what offence can that lonely 
child, of ten or twelve years old, be shut up here ? Oh! that 
boy ? He is the son of the prisoner we saw just now ; is a 
witness against his father ; and is detained here for safe-keeping, 
until the trial: that's all. 

But it is a dreadful place for the child to pass the long days 



mm york. 



10 



and nights in. This is rather hard treatment for a young wit- 
ness, is it not ? — What says our conductor? 

" Well, it ant a very rowdy life, and that's a fact! " 

Again he clinks his metal Castanet, and leads us leisurely 
away. I have a question to ask him as we go. 

" Pray, why do they call this place the Tombs?" 

u Well, it's the cant name." 

u I know it is. Why?" 

" Some suicides happened here, when it w r as first built. I 
expect it come about from that. " 

"I saw just now, that that man's clothes were scattered 
about the floor of his cell. Don't you oblige the prisoners to be 
orderly, and put such things away ? " 

LL Where should they put 'em? " 

" Not on the ground surely. What do you say to hanging 
them up ? " 

He stops, and looks round to emphasize his answer : 

"Why, I say that's just it. When they had hooks they would 
hang themselves, so they're taken out of every cell, and there's 
only the marks left where they used to be ! " 

The prison-yard in which he pauses now, has been the scene 
of terrible performances. Into this narrow, grave-like place, 
men are brought out to die. The wretched creature stands 
beneath the gibbet on the ground ; the rope about his neck ; 
and when the sign is given, a weight at its other end comes 
running down, and swings him up into the air — a corpse. 

The law requires that there be present at this dismal spec- 
tacle, the judge, the jury, and citizens to the amount of twenty- 
five. From the community it is hidden. To the dissolute and 
bad, the thing remains a frightful mystery. Between the cri- 
minal and them, the prison-wall is interposed as a thick gloomy 
veil. It is the curtain to his bed of death, his winding-sheet, 
and grave. From him it shuts out life, and all the motives to 
unrepenting hardihood in that last hour, which its mere sight 
and presence is often all-sufficient to sustain. There are no 
bold eyes to make him bold ; no ruffians to uphold a ruffian's 



IOC 



NEW YORK. 



name before. All beyond the pitiless stone wall, is unknown 

space. 

Let us go forth again into the cheerful streets. 

Once more in Broadway ! Here are the same ladies in bright 
colours, walking to and fro, in pairs and singly ; yonder the 
very same light blue parasol which passed and repassed the 
hotel-window twenty times while we were sitting there. We 
are going to cross here. Take care of the pigs. Two portly 
sows are trotting up behind this carriage, and a select party of 
half-a-dozen gentlemen-hogs have just now turned the corner. 

Here is a solitary swine, lounging homeward by himself. 
He has only one ear ; having parted with the other to vagrant- 
dogs in the course of his city rambles. But he gets on very well 
wilhout it ; and leads a roving, gentlemanly, vagabond kind of 
life, somewhat answering to that of our club-men at home. He 
leaves his lodgings every morning at a certain hour, throws 
himself upon the town, gets through his day in some manner 
quite satisfactory to himself, and regularly appears at the door 
of his own house again at night, like the mysterious master of 
Gil Bias. He is a free-and-easy, careless, indifferent kind of pig, 
having a very large acquaintance among other pigs of the same 
character, whom he rather knows by sight than conversation, 
as he seldom troubles himself to stop and exchange civilities, 
but goes grunting down the kennel, turning up the news and 
small- talk of the city, in the shape of cabbage-stalks and offal, 
and bearing no tails but his own : which is a very short one, for 
his old enemies, the dogs, have been at that too, and have left 
him hardly enough to swear by. He is in every respect a 
republican pig, going wherever he pleases, and mingling with 
the best society, on an equal, if not superior footing, for every 
one makes way when he appears, and the haughtiest give him 
the wall, if he prefer it. He is a great philosopher, and seldom 
moved, unless by [he dogs before-mentioned. Sometimes, in- 
deed, you may see his small eye twinkling on a slaughtered 
friend, whose carcase garnishes a butcher's door-post, but he 
grunts out " Such is life : all flesh is pork ! " buries his nose in 
the mire again, and waddles down the gutter • comforting him- 



NEW YORK, 



107 



self with the reflection that there is one snout the less to anti- 
cipate stray cabbage-stalks, at any rate. 

They are the city scavengers, these pigs. Ugly brutes they 
are ; having, for the most part, scanty, brown backs, like the 
lids of old horse-hair trunks •. spotted with unwholesome black 
blotches. They have long, gaunt legs, too, and such peaked 
snouts, that if one of them could be persuaded to sit for his 
profile, nobody would recognise it for a pig's likeness. They 
are never attended upon, or fed, or driven, or caught, but are 
thrown upon their own resources in early life, and become 
preternaturally knowing in consequence. Every pig knows 
where he lives, much better than anybody could tell him. At 
this hour, just as evening is closing in, you will see them 
roaming towards bed by scores, eating their way to the last. 
Occasionally, some youth among them who has over-eaten him- 
self, or has been much worried by dogs, trots shrinkingly 
homeward, like a prodigal son : but this is a rare case : perfect 
self-possession and self-reliance, and immovable composure, 
being their foremost attributes. 

The streets and shops are lighted now ; and as the eye travels 
down the long thoroughfare, dotted with bright jets of gas, it is 
reminded of Oxford Street or Piccadilly. Here and there, a 
flight of broad stone cellar-steps appears, and a painted lamp 
directs you to the Bowling Saloon, or Ten-Pin alley : Ten- Pins 
being a game of mingled chance and skill, invented when the 
legislature passed an act forbidding Nine-Pins. At other down- 
ward flights of steps, are other lamps, marking the w hereabouts 
of oyster-cellars — pleasant retreats, say I : not only by reason 
of their wonderful cookery of oysters, pretty nigh as large as 
cheese-plates, (or for thy dear sake, heartiest of Greek Pro- 
fessors but because of all kinds of eaters of fish, or flesh, or 
fowl, in these latitudes, the swallowers of oysters afonc are not 
gregarious; but subduing themselves, as it were, to the nature 
of what they work in, and copying the coyness of the thing they 
eat, do sit apart in curtained boxes, and consort by twos, not by 
two hundreds. 

But how quiet the streets are! Are there no itinerant 



JOS 



NEW YORK. 



bands; no vind or stringed instruments? No, not one. SJy 
day, are there no Punches, Fantoccinis, Dancing-dogs, Jug- 
glers, Conjurors, Orchcstrinas, or even Barrel-organs ? No, 
not one. Yes, I remember one. One barrel-organ and a 
dancing-monkey — sportive by nature, but fast fading into a 
dull, lumpish monkey, of the Utilitarian school. Beyond that, 
nothing lively ; no, not so much as a white mouse in a twirling 
cage. 

Are there no amusements? Yes. There is a lecture-room 
across the way, from which that glare of light proceeds, and 
there may be evening service for the ladies thrice a week, \ r 
oftener. For the young gentlemen, there is the counting- 
house, the store, the bar-room : the latter, as you may see 
through these windows, pretty full. Hark ! to the clicking 
sound of hammers breaking lumps of ice, and to the cool 
gurgling of the pounded bits, as, in the process of mixing, tb ey 
are poured from glass to glass! No amusements? What arv 
these suckers of cigars and swallowers of strong drinks , w" 
hats and legs we see in every possible variety of twist, doing, 
but amusing themselves? What are the fifty newspapers, 
which those precocious urchins are bawling down the street, 
and which are kept filed within, what are they but amuse- 
ments ? Not vapid waterish amusements, but good strong stufT; 
dealing in round abase and blackguard names; pulling off the 
roofs of private houses, as the Halting Devil did in Spain; 
pimping and pandering for all degrees of vicious taste, and 
gorging with coined lies the most voracious maw ; imputing to 
every man in public life the coarsest and the vilest motives , 
scaring away from the stabbed and prostrate body-politic, every 
Samaritan of clear conscience and good deeds; and setting on, 
with yell and whistle and the clapping of foul hands, the vilest 
vermin and worst birds of prey. — No amusements! 

Let us go again ; and passing this wilderness of an hotel wr'ui 
stores about its base, like some continental theatre, or the Lon- 
don Opera House shorn of its colonnade, plunge into the Five 
Points. But it is needful, first, that we take as our escort 
these two heads of the police, whom you would know for sharp 



NEW \ORK, 



109 



and well-trained officers if you met them in the Great Desert. 
So true it is. that certain pursuits, wherever carried on, will 
stamp men with the same character. These two might have 
been begotten, born, and bred, in Bow Street. 

We have seen no beggars in the streets by night or day ; but 
of other kinds of strollers, plenty. Poverty, wretchedness, 
and vice, are rife enough where we are going now. 

This is the place : these narrow ways, diverging to the right 
and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth. Such lives 
as are led here, bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. The 
coarse and bloated faces at the doors, have counterparts at 
home, and all the wide world over. Debauchery has made the 
very houses prematurely old . See how the rotten beams are 
tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows 
>eem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken 
frays. Many of those pigs live here. Do they ever wonder 
why their masters walk upright in lieu of going on all-fours? 
and why they talk instead of grunting ? 

So far, nearly every house is a low tavern ; and on the bar- 
room walls, are coloured prints of Washington, and Queen 
Victoria of England, and the American Eagle. Among the 
pigeon-holes that hold the bottles, are pieces of plate-glass and 
coloured paper, for there is, in some sort, a taste for decora- 
tion, even here. And as seamen frequent these haunts, there 
re maritime pictures by the dozen : of partings between 
sailors and their lady-loves, portraits of William, of the ballad, 
and his Black-Eyed Susan ; of Will Watch, the Bold Smuggler; 
of Paul Jones the Pirate, and the like ; on which the painted 
eyes of Queen Victoria, and of Washington to boot, rest in as 
strange companionship, as on most of the scenes that are enacted 
a f heir wondering presence. 

W hat place is this, to which the squalid street conducts us? 
A kind of square of leprous houses, some of w hich are attain- 
able only by crazy w T ooden stairs without. What lies beyond 
this tottering flight of steps, that creak beneath our tread? a 
miserable room, lighted by one dim candle, and destitute of 
all comfort, save that which may be hidden in a w retched bed. 



110 



\EW YORK. 



Beside it, sits a man : his elbows on his knees : his forehead 
hidden in his hands. "What ails that man !' ? asks the fore- 
most officer. "Fever/' he sullenly replies, without looking up. 
Conceive the fancies of a fevered brain, in such a place as 
this ! 

Ascend these pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a false footing on 
the trembling boards, and grope your way with me into this 
wolflsh den, where neither ray of light nor breath of air, ap- 
pears to come. A negro lad, startled from his sleep by the of- 
ficer's voice — he knows it well — but comforted by his assurance 
that he has not come on business, officiously bestirs himself to 
light a candle. The match flickers for a moment, and shows 
great mounds of dusky rags upon the ground , then dies away 
and leaves a denser darkness than before, if there can be de- 
grees in such extremes. He stumbles down the stairs and pre- 
sently comes back, shading a flaring taper with his hand. Then 
the mounds of rags are seen to be astir, and rise slowly up, and 
the floor is covered with heaps of negro women, waking from 
their sleep : their white teeth chattering, and their bright eyes 
glistening and winking on all sides with surprise and fear, like 
the countless repetition of one astonished African face in some 
strange mirror. 

Mount up these other stairs with no less caution (there are 
traps and pitfalls here, for those who are not so well escorted 
as ourselves) into the housetop; where the bare beams and rafters 
meet over-head, and calm night looks down through the cre- 
vices in the roof. Open tbe door of one of these cramped hut- 
ches full of sleeping negroes. Pah ! They have a charcoal Ore 
within ; there is a smell of singeing clothes, or flesh, so close 
they gather round the brazier; and vapours issue forth that 
blind and suffocate. From every corner, as you glance about 
you in these dark retreats, some figure crawls half-awakened, 
as if the judgment-hour were near at hand, and every obscene 
grave were giving up its dead. Where dogs would howl to 
lie, women, and men, and boys slink off to sleep, forcing the 
dislodged rats to move away in quest of better lodgings. 

Here too are lanes and alleys, paved with mud knee-deep : 



>L\Y \01lh. 



Ill 



underground chambers, where they dance and game ; the walls 
bedecked with rough designs of ships, and forts, and flags, and 
American Eagles out of number : ruined houses, open to the 
street, whence, through wide gaps in the walls, other ruins 
i<»>m upon the eye, as though the world of vice and misery had 
nothing else to show : hideous tenements which take their name 
from robbery and murder : all that is loathsome, drooping, and 
decayed is here. 

Our leader has his hand upon the latch of " Almack's, " and 
calls to us from the bottom of the steps : for the assembly-room 
of the Five-Point fashionables is approached by a descent. Shall 
we go in? It is but a moment. 

Heyday ! the landlady of Almack's thrives ! A buxom fat mu- 
latto woman, with sparkling eyes, whose head is daintiy orna- 
mented with a handkerchief of many colours. Nor is the 
landlord much behind her in his finery, being attired in a smart 
blue jacket, like a ship s steward, with a thick gold ring upon 
his little finger, and round his neck a gleaming golden watch- 
guard. How glad he is to see us ! What will we please to call 
for? A dance? It shall be done directly, sir : "a regular 
break-down." 

The corpulent black fiddler, and his friend who plays the 
tambourine, stamp upon the boarding of the small raised or- 
chestra in which they sit, and play a lively measure. Five or 
six couple come upon the floor, marshalled by a lively young 
negro, who is the wit of the assembly, and the greatest dancer 
known. He never leaves off making queer faces, and is the 
delight of all the rest, who grin from ear to ear incessantly. 
Among the dancers are two young mulatto girls, with large, 
black, drooping eyes, and head-gear after the fashion of the 
hostess, who are as shy or feign to be, as though they never 
danced before, and so look down before the visitors, that their 
partners can see nothing but the long fringed lashes. 

But the dance commences. Every gentleman sets as long as 
he likes to the opposite lady, and the opposite lady to him, and 
all are so long about it that the sport begins to languish, when 
suddenly the lively hero dashes in to the rescue. Instantly the 



NEW YORK.. 



(idler grins, and goes at it tooth and nail ; there is new energy in 
the tambourine; new laughter in the dancers; new smiles in 
the landlady ; new confidence in the landlord ; new brightness 
in the very candles. Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and 
cross-cut : snapping his fingers, rolling his eyes, turning in his 
knees, presenting the back of his legs in front, spinning about 
on his toes and heels like nothing but the man's fingers on the 
tambourine; dancing with two left legs, two right legs, two 
wooden legs, two wire legs, two spring legs — all sorts of legs 
and no legs— what it this to him? And in what walk of life, or 
dance of life, does man ever get such stimulating applause as 
thunders about him, when, having danced his partner off her 
feet, and himself too, he finishes by leaping gloriously on the 
bar- counter, and calling for something to drink, with the 
chuckle of a million of counterfeit Jim Crows, in one inimitable 
sound ! 

The air, even in these distempered parts, is fresh after the 
stifling atmosphere of the houses ; and now, as we emerge into 
a broader street, it blows upon us with a purer breath, and the 
stars look bright again. Here are The Tombs once more. The 
city watch-house is a part of the building. It follows naturally 
on the sights we have just left. Let us see that, and then to bed. 

What! do you thrust your common offenders against the 
police discipline of the town, into such holes as these? Do men 
and women, against whom no crime is proved, lie here all 
night in perfect darkness, surrounded by the noisome vapours 
which encircle that flagging lamp you light us with, and breath- 
ing this filthy and offensive stench! Why, such indecent 
and disgusting dungeons as these cells, would bring disgrace 
upon the most despotic empire in the world ! Look at them, 
man — you, who see them every night, and keep the keys. 
Do you see w hat they are ? Do you know how drains are made 
below the streets, and wherein these human sewers differ, 
except in being always stagnant 7 

Well, he don't know. He has had five-and-twenty young 
women locked up in this very cell at one time, and you'd 
hardly realise what handsome faces there were among 'em. 



NEW YORK. 



1 13 



In God s name ! shut the door upon the wretched creature 
who is in it now, and put its screen before a place, quite unsur- 
passed in all the vice, neglect, and devilry, of the worst old 
town in Europe. 

Are people really left all night, untried, in those black sties? 
— Every night. The watch is set at seven in the evening. 
The magistrate opens his court at five in the morning. That 
is the earliest hour at which the first prisoner can be released ; 
and if an officer appear against him, he is not taken out till 
nine o'clock or ten. — But if any one among them die in the 
interval, as one man did, not long ago? Then he is half-eaten 
by the rats in an hour's time; as that man was; and there 
an end. 

What is this intolerable tolling of great bells, and crashing 
of wheels, and shouting in the distance? Afire. And what 
that deep red light in the opposite direction? Another fire. 
And what these charred and blackened walls we stand before? 
A dwelling where a fire has been. It was more than hinted, 
in an official report, not long ago, that some of these confla- 
grations were not wholly accidental, and that speculation and 
enterprise found a field of exertion, even in flames : but be this 
as it may, there was a fire last night, there are two to-night, 
and you may lay an even wager there will be at least one, to- 
morrow. So, carrying that with us for our comfort, let us 
say, Good night, and climb up stairs to bed. 



One day, during my stay in New York, I paid a visit to the 
different public institutions on Long Island. One of them is 
a Lunatic Asylum. The building is handsome ; and is remark- 
able for a spacious and elegant staircase. The whole struc- 
ture is not yet finished, but it is already one of considerable 
size and extent, and is capable of accommodating a very large 
number of patients. 



NEW YORK. 



I cannot say that I derived much contort from the inspection 
of this charity. The different wards might have been cleaner 
and better ordered ; I saw nothing of that salutary system 
which had impressed me so favourably elsewhere ; and every- 
thing had a lounging, listless, madhouse air, which was very 
painful. The moping idiot, cowering down with long 
dishevelled hair ; the gibbering maniac, with his hideous laugh 
and pointed finger ; the vacant eye, the fierce wild face, the 
gloomy picking of the hands and lips, and munching of the 
nails : there they w ere all, without disguise, in naked ugliness 
and horror. In the dining-room, a bare, dull, dreary place, 
with nothing for the eye to rest on but the empty walls, a 
woman was locked up alone. She w as bent, they told me, on 
committing suicide. If anything could have strengthened her 
in her resolution, it would certainly have been the insup- 
portable monotony of such an existence. 

The terrible crowd with which these halls and galleries were 
filled, so shocked me, that I abridged my stay within the 
shortest limits, and declined to see that portion of the building 
in which the refractory and violent were under closer restraint. 
I have no doubt that the gentleman who presided over this 
establishment at the lime I write of, was competent to manage 
it, and had done all in his power to promote its usefulness : 
but w ill it be believed that the miserable strife of Party feeling 
is carried even into this sad refuge of afflicted and degraded 
humanity? Will it be believed that the eyes which are to 
w atch over and controul the wanderings of minds on which 
the most dreadful visitation to which our nature is exposed 
has fallen, must wear the glasses of some wretched side in 
Politics? Will it be believed that the governor of such a house 
as this, is appointed, and deposed, and changed perpetually, 
as Parties fluctuate and vary, and as their despicable weather- 
cocks are blown this way or that? A hundred times in every 
w r eek, some new most paltry exhibition of that narrow -minded 
and injurious Party Spirit, which is the Simoom of America, 
sickening and blighting everything of wholesome life within 
its reach, w r as forced upon my notice; but I never turned my 



MEW YORK. llo 

back upon it with feelings of such deep disgust and measure- 
less contempt, as when I crossed the threshold of this mad- 
house on Long Island. 

At a short distance from this building is another called the 
Alms House, that is to say, the work house of New York This 
is a large Institution also , lodging, I believe, when I was there, 
nearly a thousand poor. It was badly ventilated, and badly 
lighted .- was not too clean ; and impressed me, on the whole 
very uncomfortably. But it must be remembered that New 
lork as a great emporium of commerce, and as a place of Ge- 
neral resort, not only from all P arls of the States, but from 
most parts of the world, has always a large pauper population 
to provide for; and labours, therefore, under peculiar diffi- 
culties in tins respect. Nor must it be forgotten that New 
l ork is a large town, and that in all large towns a vast amount 
ol good and evil is intermixed and jumbled up together. 

In the same neighbourhood is the Long Island Farm, where 
young orphans are nursed and bred. I did not see it, but I 
believe it is well conducted ; and I can the more easily credit it. 
rom knowmg how mindful they usually are, in America, of 
that beautiful passage in the Litany which remembers all sick 
persons and young children. 

I was taken to these Institutions by water, in a boat belong- 
ing to the Long Island Jail, and rowed by a crew of prisoners, 
who were uressed in a striped uniform of black and buff in 
which they looked like faded tigers. They tookme, by thesame 
conveyance, lo the Jail itself. 

It is an old prison, and quite a pioneer establishment, on the 
plan I have a ready described. I was glad to hear this, for it is 
unquestionably a very indifferent one. The most is made 
however, of the means it possesses, and it is as well regulated 
as such a place can be. 

The women work in covered sheds, erected forthat purpose. 
If I remember right, there are no shops for (he men, but be that 
as it may, the greater part of them labour in certain slone-quar- 
n« near at hand. The day being very wet indeed, this labour 
w as suspended, and the prisoners were in their cells. Imagine 



116 



NEW YORK. 



these cells, some two or three hundred in number and in every 
one a man, locked up : this one at his door for air, with his 
hand thrust through the grate ; this one in bed (in the middle 
of the day, remember) ; and this one flung down in aheap upon 
the ground, with his head against the bars, like a wild beast. 
Make the rain pour down, outside, in torrents. Put the ever- 
lasting stove in the midst : hot, and suffocating, and vaporous, 
as a witch's cauldron. Add a collection of gentle odours, such 
as would arise from a thousand mildewed umbrellas, wet 
through, and a thousand buck- baskets, full of half-washed linen 
and there is the prison, as it was that day, 

The prison for the State at Sing Sing, is, on the other hand, 
a model jail. That, and Mount Auburn, are the largest and 
best examples of the silent system. 

In another part of the city, is the Refuge for the Destitute : 
an Institution whose object is to reclaim youthful offenders, 
male and female, black and white, without distinction ; to teach 
them useful trades, apprentice them to respectable masters, and 
make them worthy members of society. Its design, it will be 
seen, is similar to that at Boston ; and it is a no less meritorious 
and admirable establishment. A suspicion crossed my mind 
during my inspection of this noble charity, whether the super- 
intendent had quite sufficient knowledge of the world and 
worldly characters ; and whether he did not commit a great 
mistake in treating some young girls, who were to all intents 
and purposes by their years and their past lives, women, as 
though they were little children ; which certainly had a ludi- 
crous effect in my eyes, and, or I am much mistaken, in theirs 
also. As the Institution, however, is always under the vigilant 
examination of a body of gentlemen of great intelligence and 
experience, it cannot fail to be well conducted ; and whether I 
am right or wrong in this slight particular, is unimportant to 
its deserts and character, which it wouldbe difficult to estimate 
too highly. 

In addition to these establishments, there are, in New York, 
excellent hospitals and schools, literary institutions and libra- 
ries ; an admirable Arc department (as indeed it should be, 



NEW YORK. 



117 



having constant practice), and charities of every sort and kind. 
In the suburbs there is a spacious cemetery: unflnishedyet, but 
every day improving. The saddest tomb I saw there was 4 ' The 
Strangers' Grave, Dedicated to the different hotels in this 
city. 7 ' 

There are three theatres. Two of them, the Park and the 
Bowery, are large, elegant, and handsome buildings, and are, 
I grieve to write it, generally deserted. The third, the Olym- 
pic, is a tiny show-box for vaudevilles and burlesques. It is 
singularly well-conducted by Mr. Mitchell, a comic actor of 
great quiet humour and originality, who is well remembered 
and esteemed by London playgoers. I am happy to report of 
this deserving gentleman, that his benches are usually well 
filled, and that his theatre rings with merriment every night. 
I had almost forgotten a small summer theatre, called INiblo's, 
with gardens and open air amusements attached ; but I believe 
it is not exempt from the general depression under which 
Theatrical Property, or what is humorously called by that name, 
unfortunately labours. 

The country round New York, is surpassingly and exqui- 
sitely picturesque. The climate, as I have already intimated, 
is somewhat of the warmest. What it would be, without the 
sea breezes which come from its beautiful Bay in the evening 
time, I will not throw myself or my readers into a fever by 
inquiring. 

The tone of the best society in this city, is like that of Bos- 
ton ; here and there, it may be, with a greater infusion of 
the mercantile spirit, but generally polished and refined, and 
always most hospitable. The houses and tables are elegant ; 
the hours later and more rakish; and there is, perhaps, a 
greater spirit of contention in reference to appearances, and 
the display of wealth and costly living. The ladies are singu- 
larly beautiful. 

Before I left 2Sew r York I made arrangements for securing a 
passage home in the George Washington packet ship, which 
was advertised to sail in June : that being the month in which 



118 



NEW YORK. 



I had determined, if prevented by no aceident in the course of 
ray ramblings, to leave America. 

I never thought that going back to England, returning to all 
who are dear to me, and to pursuits that have insensibly grown 
to be a part of my nature, I could have felt so much sorrow as 
I endured, when I parted at last, on board this ship, with 
the friends who had accompanied me from this city. I never 
thought the name of any place, so far away and so lately 
known, could ever associate itself in my mind with the crowd 
of affectionate remembrances that now cluster about it. There 
are those in this city who would brighten, to me, the darkest 
winter day that ever glimmered and went out in Lapland; and 
before whose presence even Home grew dim, when they and I 
exchanged that painful word which mingles with our every 
thought and deed ; which haunts our cradle-heads in infancy, 
and closes up the vista of our lives in age. 



PHILADELPHIA. 



CHAPTER THE SEVENTH. 



PHILADELPHIA, AND ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 

The journey from New York to Philadelphia, is made by 
railroad, and two ferries ; and usually occupies between five 
and six hours. It was a fine evening when we were passengers 
in the train : and, watching the bright sunset from a little 
window near the door by which we sat, my attention was at- 
tracted to a remarkable appearance issuing from the windows 
of the gentlemen's car immediately in front of us, which I sup- 
posed for some time was occasioned by a number of industrious 
persons inside, ripping open feather-beds, and giving the fea- 
thers to the wind. At length it occurred to me that they were 
only spitting, which was indeed the case; though how any 
number of passengers which it was possible for that car to 
contain, could have maintained such a playful and incessant 
shower of expectoration, I am still at a loss to understand : 
notwithstanding the experience in all salivatory phenomena 
which I afterwards acquired. 

I made acquaintance, on this journey, with a mild and modest 
young quaker, who opened the discourse by informing me, in a 
grave whisper, that his grandfather was the inventor of cold- 
drawn castor oil. I mention the circumstance here, thinking 
it probable that this is the first occasion on which the valuable 
medicine in question was ever used as a conversational ape- 
rient. 

We reached the city, late that night. Looking out of my 
chamber window, before going to bed, I saw, on the opposite 



122 PHILADELPHIA, AND 

side of the way, a handsome building of white marble, which 
had a mournful ghost-like aspect, dreary to behold. I attributed 
this to the sombre influence of the night, and on rising in the 
morning looked out again, expecting to see its steps and portico 
thronged with groups of people passing in and out. The door 
was still tight shut, however; the same cold cheerless air 
prevailed ; and the building looked as if the marble statue of 
Don Guzman could alone have any business to transact within 
its gloomy walls. I hastened to enquire its name and purpose, 
and then my surprise vanished. It was the Tomb of many 
fortunes ; the Great Catacomb of investment ; the memorable 
United States Bank. 

The stoppage of this bank, with all its ruinous consequences, 
had cast (as I was told on every side) a gloom on Philadelphia , 
under the depressing effect of which, it yet laboured. It cer- 
tainly did seem rather dull and out of spirits. 

It is a handsome city, but distractingly regular. After 
walking about it for an hour or two, I felt that I would have 
given the world for a crooked street. The collar of my coat 
appeared to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand, beneath 
its quakerly influence. My hair shrunk into a sleek short crop, 
my hands folded themselves upon my breast of their own calm 
accord, and thoughts of taking lodgings in Mark Lane over 
against the Market Place, and of making a large fortune by spe- 
culations in corn, came over me involuntarily. 

Philadelphia is most bountifully provided with fresh water, 
which is showered and jerked about, and turned on, and poured 
off, everywhere. The Waterworks, which are on a height 
near the tuty, are no less ornamental than useful, being taste- 
fully laid out as a public garden, and kept in the best and 
neatest order. The river is dammed at this point, and forced 
by its own power into certain high tanks or reservoirs, whence 
the whole city, to the top stories of the houses, is supplied at a 
very trifling expense. 

There are various public institutions. Among them a most 
excellent Hospital— a quaker establishment, but not sectarian 
in the great benefits it confers j a quiet, quaint old Library, 



ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 



123 



named after Franklin ; a handsome Exchange and Post Office ; 
and so forth. In connection with the quaker Hospital, there 
is a picture by West, which is exhibited for the benefit of the 
funds of the institution. The subject is, our Saviour healing 
the sick, and it is, perhaps, as favourable a specimen of the 
master as can be seen anywhere. Whether this be high or low 
praise, depends upon the reader's taste. 

In the same room, there is a very characteristic and life-like 
portrait by Mr. Sully, a distinguished American artist. 

My stay in Philadelphia was very short, but what I saw of 
its society, I greally liked. Treating of its general characte- 
ristics, I should be disposed to say that it is more provincial 
than Boston or New York, and that there is, afloat in the fair 
city, an assumption of taste and criticism, savouring rather of 
those genteel discussions upon the same themes, in connection 
w ith Shakspeare and the Musical Glasses, of which we read in 
the Vicar of Wakeiield. Near the city, is a most splendid 
unGnished marble structure for the Girard College, founded by 
a deceased gentleman of that name and of enormous wealth, 
which, if completed according to the original design, will be 
perhaps the richest edifice of modern times. But the bequest 
is involved in legal disputes, and pending them the work has 
stopped ; so that like many other great undertakings in Ame- 
rica, even this is rather going to be done one of these days, than 
doing now. 

In the outskirts, stands a great prison, called the Eastern 
Penitentiary : conducted on a plan peculiar to the state of 
Pennsylvania. The system here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless 
solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and 
wrong. 

In its intention, I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, 
and meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who 
devised this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent 
gentlemen who carry it into execution, do not know what it is 
that they are doing. I believe that very few men are capable 
of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which 
this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the 



124 



PHILADELPHIA, AND 



sufferers ; and in guessing at it myself, and in reasoning from 
what I have seen written upon their faces, and what to my 
certain knowledge they feel within, I am only the more con- 
vinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance in it which 
none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no 
man has a right to inflict upon his fellow creature. I hold this 
slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be 
immeasurably worse than any torture of the body : and because 
its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and 
sense of touch as scars upon the flesh ; because its wounds are 
not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears 
can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punish- 
ment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay. I he- 
sitated once, debating with myself, whether, if I had the power 
of saying "Yes" or "No," I would allow it to be tried in certain 
cases, where the terms of imprisonment were short; but now, 
I solemnly declare, that with no rewards or honours could I 
w alk a happy man beneath the open sky by day or lie me down 
upon my bed at night, with the consciousness that one human 
creature, for any length of time, no matter what, lay suffering 
this unknown punishment in his silent cell, and I the cause, or 
I consenting to it in the least degree. 

I was accompanied to this prison by two gentlemen officially 
connected with its management, and passed the day in going 
from cell to cell, and talking with the inmates. Every facility 
was afforded me, that the utmost courtesy could suggest. No- 
thing w as concealed or hidden from my view , and every piece of 
information that I sought, was openly and frankly given. The 
perfect order of the building cannot be praised too highly, and 
of the excellent motives of all who are immediately concerned 
in the administration of the system, there can be no kind of 
question. 

Betw een the body of the prison and the outer wall, there is a 
spacious garden. Entering it, by a wicket in the massive gate, 
we" pursued the path before us to its other termination, and 
passed in to a large chamber, from which seven long passages 
radiate. On either side of each, is a long, long row of low cell 



ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 



125 



doors, with a certain number over every one. Above, a gallery 
of cells like those below, except that they have no narrow yard 
attached (as those in the ground tier have), and are somewhat 
smaller. The possession of two of these, is supposed to com- 
pensate for the absence of so much air and exercise as can be 
had in the dull strip attached to each of the others, in an hour's 
time every day 5 and therefore every prisoner in this upper 
story has two cells, adjoining and communicating with, each 
other. 

Standing at the central point, and looking down these dreary 
passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevails, is awfull. 
Occasionally, there is a drowsy sound from some lone weaver's 
shuttle, or shoemaker's last, but it is stifled by the thick walls 
and heavy dungeon-door, and only serves to make the general 
stillness more profound. Over the head and face of every pri- 
soner who comes into this melancholy house, a black hood is 
drawn; and in this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain 
dropped between him and the living world, he is led to the cell 
from which he never again comes forth, until his whole term of 
imprisonment has expired. He never hears of wife or children; 
home or friends ; the life or death of any single creature. He 
sees the prison-officers, but with that exception he never looks 
upon a human countenance, or hears a human voice. Me is a 
man buried alive; to be dug out in the slow round of years; 
and in the mean time dead to everything but torturing anxieties 
and horrible despair. 

His name, and crime, and term of suffering, are unknown, 
even to the officer who delivers him his daily food. There is a 
number over his cell-door, and in a book of which the governor 
of the prison has one copy, and the moral instructor another : 
this is the index to his history. Beyond these pages the prison 
has no record of his existence : and though he live to be in the 
same cell t<n weary years, he has no means of knowing, down 
to the very last hour, in what part of the building it is situated; 
what kind of men there are about him ; whether in the long 
winter nights there arc living people near, or he is in some 
lonely corner of the great jail, with walls, and passages, 



12G 



PHILADELPHIA, AND 



and iron doors between him and the nearest sharer in its soli- 
tary horrors. 

Every cell has double doors : the outer one of sturdy oak, 
the other of grated iron, wherein there is a trap through which 
his food is handed. He has a Bible, and a slate and pencil, and, 
under certain restrictions, has sometimes other books, provided 
for the purpose, and pen and ink and paper. His razor, plate, 
and can, and bazin, hang upon the wall, or shine upon the 
little shelf. Fresh water is laid on in every cell, and he can 
draw it at his pleasure. During the day, his bedstead turns up 
against the wall, and leaves more space for him to work in. 
His loom, or bench, or wheel, is there ; and there he labours, 
sleeps and wakes, and counts the seasons as they change, and 
grows old. 

Te first man I saw, was seated at his loom, at work. He 
had been there, six years, and was to remain, I think, three 
more. He had been convicted as a receiver of stolen goods, 
but even after this long imprisonment, denied his guilt, and 
said he had been hardly dealt by. It was his second offence. 

He stopped his work when we went in, took off his spectacles, 
and answered freely to everything that was said to him, but 
always with a strange kind of pause first, and in a low, thought- 
ful voice. He wore a paper hat of his own making, and was 
pleased to have it noticed and commended. He had very in- 
geniously manufactured a sort of Dutch clock from some disre- 
garded odds and ends : and his vinegar-bottle served for the 
pendulum. Seeing me interested in this contrivance, he looked 
up at it with a great deal of pride, and said that he had been 
thinking of improving it, and that he hoped the hammer and a 
little piece of broken glass beside it " would play music before 
long/' He had extracted some colours from the yarn with 
which he worked, and painted a few poor figures on the 
wall. One, of a female, over the door, he called " The Lady 
of the Lake." 

He smiled as I looked at these contrivances to wile away the 
time ; but when I looked from them to him, I saw that his lip 
trembled , and could have counted the beating of his heart. I 



ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 



127 



forget how it came about, but some allusion was made to his 
having a wife. He shook his head at (he word, turned aside, 
and covered his face with his hands. 

44 Bat you are resigned now! " said one of the gentlemen 
after a short pause , during which he had resumed his former 
manner. He answered with a sigh that seemed quite reckless in 
its hopelessness, u Oh yes, oh yes! I am resigned to it/ 
" And are a better man, you think?" u Well, I hope so : 
I'm sure I hope I may be." "And time goes pretty quickly ? " 
"Time is very long, gentlemen, w ithin these four walls !" 

He gazed about him — Heaven only knows how wearily! — 
as he said these words ; and in the act of doing so, fell into a 
strange stare as if he had forgotten something. A moment 
afterwards he sighed heavily, put on his spectacles, and went 
about his work again. 

In another cell, there was a German, sentenced to five years' 
imprisonment for larceny, two of which had just expired. 
With colours procured in the same manner, he had painted 
every inch of the walls and ceiling quite beautifully. He had 
laid out the few feet of ground, behind, with exquisite neat- 
ness, and had made a little bed in the centre, that looked by 
the bye like a grave. The taste and ingenuity he had displayed 
in everything were most extraordinary; and yet a more dejected, 
heart-broken, wretched creature, it would be difficult to ima- 
gine. I never saw such a picture of forlorn affliction and dis- 
tress of mind. My heart bled for him ; and when the tears ran 
down his cheeks, and he took one of the visitors aside, to ask, 
with his trembling hands nervously clutching at his coat to 
detain him, whether there was no hope of his dismal sentence 
being commuted, the spectacle was really too painful to wit- 
ness. I never saw or heard of any kind of misery that impressed 
me more than the wretchedness of this man. 

In a third cell, was a tall strong black, a burglar, working 
at his proper trade of making screws and the like. His time 
was nearly out. He was not only a very dexterous thief, but 
was notorious for his boldness and hardihood, and for the num- 
ber of his previous convictions. He entertained us with a 



128 



PHILADELPHIA, AND 



long account of his achievements, which he narrated with such 
infinite relish, that he actually seemed to lick his lips as he told 
us racy anecdotes of stolen plate, and of old ladies whom he 
had w atched as they sat at windows in silver spectacles (he had 
plainly had an eye to their metal even from the other side of 
the street), and had afterwards robbed. This fellow, upon the 
slightest encouragement, would have mingled with his profes- 
sional recollections the most detestable cant ; but I am very 
much mistaken if he could have surpassed the unmitigated 
hypocrisy with which he declared that he blessed the day on 
which he came into that prison, and that he never would com- 
mit another robbery as long as he lived. 

There was one man who was allowed, as an indulgence, to 
keep rabbits. His room having rather a close smell in conse- 
quence, they called to him at the door to come out into the 
passage. He complied of course, and stood shading his haggard 
face in the unwonted sunlight of the great window , looking 
as wan and unearthly as if he had been summoned from the 
grave. He had a white rabbit in his breast; and when the 
little creature, getting down upon the ground, stole back into 
the cell, and he, being dismissed, crept timidly after it, I 
thought it vould have been very hard to say in what respect 
the man was the nobler animal of the two. 

There was an English thief, who had been there but a few 
days out of seven years = a villanous, low-browed, thin-lipped 
fellow, with a w hite face ; who had as yet no relish for visitors, 
and who, but for the additional penalty, would have gladly 
stabbed me with his shoemaker's knife. There was another 
German who had entered the jail but yestarday, and who 
started from his bed when we looked in, and pleaded, in his 
broken English, very hard for work. There was a poet, who 
after doing two days' work in every four-and-twenty hours, 
one for himself and one for the prison, wrote verses about 
ships (he was by trade a mariner), and " the maddening wine- 
cup, ; ' and his friends at home. There were very many of them. 
Some reddened at the sight of visitors, and some turned very 
pale. Some two or three had prisoner nurses with them, for 



ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 



they were very sick; and one, a fat old negro whose leg had 
been taken off within the jail, had for his attendant a classical 
scholar and an accomplished surgeon, himself a prisoner like- 
wise. Sitting upon the stairs, engaged in some slight work, 
was a pretty coloured hoy. u Js there no refuge for young 
criminals in Philadelphia, then? " said I. " Yes, but only for 
white children." Noble aristocracy in crime ! 

There was a sailor who had been there upwards of eleven 
years, and who in a few months' time would be free. Eleven 
years of solitary confinement ! 

"I am very glad to hear your time is nearly out." "What 
does he say? Nothing. Why does he stare at his hands, and 
pick the flesh upon his fingers, and raise his eyes for an instant, 
every now and then, to those bare wails which have seen his 
head turn grey ? It is a way he has sometimes. 

Does he never look men in the face, and does he always 
pluck at those hands of his, as though he were bent on part- 
ing skin and bone? It is his humour : nothing more. 

It is his humour too, to say that he does not look forward to 
going out ; that he is not glad the time is drawing near ; that 
he did look forward to it once, but that was very long ago ; 
that he has lost all care for everything. It is his humour to be 
a helpless, crushed, and broken man. And, Heaven be his wit- 
ness that he has his humour thoroughly gratified! 

There were three young women in adjoining cells, all con- 
victed at the same time of a conspiracy to rob their prosecutor. 
In the silence and solitude of their lives, they had grown to be 
quite beautiful. Their looks were very sad, and might have 
moved the sternest visitor to tears, but not to that kind of sor- 
row which the contemplation of the men awakens. One was 
a young girl; not twenty, as I recollect; whose snow-white 
room was hung with the work of some former prisoner, and 
upon whose downcast face the sun in all its splendour shone 
down through the high chink in the wall, where one narrow 7 
strip of bright blue sky was visible. She was very penitent 
and quiet j had come to be resigned, she said (and I believe 
her, ; and had a mind at peace. " In a word, you are happy 

9 



130 



PHILADELPHIA, AM) 



here?" said one of my companion?. She struggled— she did 
struggle very hard— to answer, Yes : but raising her eyes, 
and meeting that glimpse of freedom over-head, she burst into 
tears, and said, " She tried to be ; she uttered no complaint; 
but it was natural that she should sometimes long to go out of 
that one cell : she could not help that" she sobbed , poor 
thing ! 

I went from cell to cell that day; and every face I saw, or 
word I heard, or incident I noted, is present to my mind in all 
its painfullness. But let me pass them by, for one, more plea- 
sant, glance of a prison on the same plan which I afterwards 
saw at Pittsburgh. 

When I had gone over that, in the same manner, I asked 
the governor if he had any person m his charge who w2S 
shortly going out. He had one, he said, whose time was up 
next day ; but he had only been a prisoner two years. 

Two years ! I looked back through two years in my own 
life — out of jail, prosperous, happy, surrounded by blessings, 
comforts, and good fortune — and thought how wide a gap it 
was, and how long those two years passed in solitary captivity 
would have been. I have the face of this man, who was going 
to be released next day, before me now. It is almost more 
memorable in its happiness than the other faces in their misery. 
How easy and how natural it was for him to say that the sys- 
tem was a good one; and that the time went "pretty quick — 
considering • " and that when a man once felt he had offended 
the law, and must satisfy it, "he got along, somehow ? and so 
forth ! 

" What did he call you back to say to you, in that strange 
flutter ? " I asked of my conductor, when he had locked the door 
and joined me in the passage. 

" Oh ! That he was afraid the soles of his boots were not fit 
for walking, as they w 7 ere a good deal worn when he came in ; 
and that he would thank me very much to have them mended, 
ready." 

Those boots had been taken off his feet., and put away with 
the rest of his clothes, two years before ! 



ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 



131 



i took that opportunity of irqu'ring how they conducted 
themselves immediately before going out ; adding that I pre- 
sumed they trembled very much. 

"Well, it's not so much a trembling," was the answer — 
M though they do quiver — as a complete derangement of the 
nervous system. They can't sign their names to the book j 
sometimes can't even hold the pen ; look about 'em without 
appearing to know why, or where they are ; and sometimes 
get up and sit down again, twenty limes in a minute. This 
is when they're in the office, where they are taken with the 
hood on, as they were brought in. When they get outside the 
gate, they stop, and look first one way and then the other : not 
knowing which to take. Sometimes they stagger as if they 
were drunk, and sometimes arc forced to lean against the 
fence, they're so bad : — but they clear off in course of time." 

As I walked among these solitary cells, and looked at the 
faces of the men within them, I tried to picture to myself the 
thoughts and feelings natural to their condition. I imagined 
the hood just taken off, and the scene of their captivity disclosed 
to them in all its dismal monotony. 

At first, the man is stunned. His confinement is a hideous 
vision : and his old life a reality. He throws himself upon his 
bed, and lies there abandoned to despair. By degrees the in- 
supportablesolitudc and barrennessof the place rouses him from 
this stupor, and when the trap in his grated door is opened, he 
humbly begs and prays for work. 44 Give me some work to do, 
or 1 shall go raving mad! " 

He has it; and by fits and starts applies himself to labour ; 
but every now and then there comcsupon him a burning sense 
of the years that must be wasted in that stone coffin, and an 
agony so piercing in the recollection of those who are hidden 
from his view and knowledge, that he starts from his seat, 
and striding up and down the narrow room with both hands 
clasped on his uplifted head, hears spirits tempting him to beat 
his brains out on the wall. 

Again he falls upon his bed, and lies there moaning. Sud- 
denly he starts up, wondering whether any other man is near; 



132 



PHILADELPHIA, AND 



Whether there is another cell like that on either side of him : 
and listens keenly. 

There is no sound, hut other prisoners may be near for all 
that. He remembers to have heard once, when he little thought 
of coming here himself, that the cells were so constructed that 
the prisoners could not hear each other, though the officers 
could hear them. Where is the nearest man— upon the right, 
or on the left ? or is there one in both directions ? Where is 
he sitting now — with his face to the light ? or is he walking to 
and fro? How is he dressed ? Has he been here long ? Is he 
much worn away? Is he very white and spectre-like? Does 
he think of his neighbour too ? 

Scarcely venturing to breathe, and listening while he thinks, 
he conjures up a figure with its back towards him, and ima- 
gines it moving about in this next cell. He has no idea of the 
face, but he is certain of the dark form of a stooping man. In 
the cell upon the other side, he puts another figure, whose face 
is hidden from him also. Day after day, and often when he 
wakes up in the middle of the night, he thinks of these two men, 
until he is almost distracted. He never changes them. There 
they are always as he first imagined them — an old man on the 
right : a younger man upon the left — whose hidden features 
torture him to death, and have a mystery that makes him 
tremble. 

The weary days pass on w ith solemn pace, like mourners at a 
funeral • and slowly he begins to feel that the white walls of the 
cell have something dreadful in them : that their colour is hor- 
rible : that their smooth surface chills his blood : that there is 
one hateful corner which torments him. Every morning when 
he wakes, he hides his head beneath the coverlet, and shudders 
to see the ghastly ceiling looking down upon him. The blessed 
light of day itself peeps in, an ugly phantom face, through the 
unchangeable crevice which is his prison window. 

By slow but sure degrees, the terrors of that hateful corner 
swell until they beset him at all times ; invade his rest, make 
his dreams hideous, and his nights dreadful. At first, he took 
a strange dislike to it : feeling as though it gavebirthin his brain 



ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 



133 



to something of corresponding shape, which ought not to be 
there, and racked his head with pains. Then he began to fear 
it, then to dream of it, and of men whispering its name and 
pointing to it. Then he could not bear to look at it, nor yet to 
turn his back upon it. Now, it is every night the lurking-place 
of a ghost •. a shadow : — a silent something, horrible to see, but 
whether bird, or beast, or muffled human shape, he cannot tell. 

When he is in his cell by day, he fears the little yard, 
without. When he is in the yard, he dreads to re-enter 
the cell. When night comes, there stands the phantom in the 
corner. If he have the courage to stand in its place, and drive 
it out (he had once ; being desperate), it broods upon his bed. 
In the twilight, and always at the same hour, a voice calls to him 
by name; as the darkness thickens, his Loom begins to live; and 
even that, his comfort, is a hideous figure, watching him till 
daybreak. 

Again, by slow degrees, these horrible fancies depart from 
him one by one : returning sometimes, unexpectedly, but at 
longer intervals, and in less alarming shapes. He has talked 
upon religious matters with the gentleman who visits him, and 
has read his Bible, and has written a prayer upon his slate, and 
hung it up, as a kind of protection, and an assurance of Heavenly 
companionship. He dreams now, sometimes, of his children 
or his wife, but is sure that they are dead or have deserted 
him. lie is easily moved to tears; is gentle, submissive, and 
broken- *piri ted. Occasionally, the old agony comes back : a 
very little thing will revive it; even a familiar sound, or the 
scent of summer flowers in the air; but it does not last long, 
now : for the world without has come to be the vision, and this 
solitary life, the sad reality. 

If his term of imprisonment be short— I mean comparatively, 
for short it cannot be— the last half year is almost worse than all; 
for then he thinks the prison will take fire and he be burnt in the 
ruins, or that he is doomed to die within the wails, or that he 
will be detained on some false charge and sentenced for another 
term : or that something, no matter what, must happen to pre- 
vent his going at large. And this is natural, and impossible to 



134 



PHILADELPHIA, AND 



be reasoned against, because, after bis long separation from 
human life, and bis great suffering, any event will appear to 
him more probable in the contemplation, than the being restored 
to liberty and bis fellow-creatures. 

If his period of confinement have been very long, the pro- 
spect of release bewilders and confuses him. His broken heart 
may flutter for a moment, when he thinks of the world outside, 
and what it might have been to him in all those lonely years, 
but that is all. The cell-door has been closed too long on all 
its hopes and cares. Better to have hanged him in the begin- 
ning than bring him to this pass, and send him forth to mingle 
with his kind, who are his kind no more. 

Cn the haggard face of every man among these prisoners, the 
same expression sat. I know not what to liken it to. It had 
something of that strained attention which we see upon the 
faces of the blind and deaf, mingled with a kind of horror, as 
though they had all been secretly terrified. In every little 
chamber that I entered, and at every grate through which I 
looked, I seemed to see the same appalling countenance. It 
lives in my memory, with the fascination of a remarkable pic- 
ture. Parade before my eyes, a hundred men, with one among 
them newly released from this solitary suffering, and I would 
point him out. 

The faces of the women, as I have said, it humanizes and 
refines. Whether this be, because of their better nature, which 
is elicited in solitude, or because of their being gentler creatu- 
res, of greater patience and longer suffering, I do not know; but 
so it is. That the punishment is nevertheless, to my thinking, 
fully as cruel and as wrong in their case, as in that of the men, 
I need scarcely add. 

My firm conviction is, that independent of the mental anguish 
it occasions — an anguish so acute and so tremendous, that all 
imagination of it must fall far short of the reality — it wears the 
mind into a morbid state, which renders it unfit for the rough 
contact and busy action of the world. It is my fixed opinion 
that those who have undergone this punishment, must pass into 
society again morally unhealthy and diseased. There are many 



ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 



135 



instances on record, of men who have chosen, or have been 
condemned, to lives of perfect solitude, but I scarcely remember 
one, even among sages of strong and vigorous intellect, where 
its effect has not become apparent, in some disordered train of 
thought, or some gloomy hallucination. What monstrous 
phantoms, bred of despondency and doubt, and born and reared 
in solitude, have stalked upon the earth, making creation ugly, 
and darkening the face of Heaven I 

Suicides are rare among these prisoners : are almost, indeed, 
unknown. But no argument in favour of the system, can reason- 
ably be deduced from this circumstance, although it is very 
often urged. All men who have made diseases of the mind, their 
study, know perfectly well that such extreme depression and 
despair as will change the whole character, and beat down all 
its powers of elasticity and self- resistance, may be at work 
within a man, and yet stop short of self-destruction. This is a 
common case. 

That it makes the senses dull, and by degrees impairs the 
bodily faculties, I am quite sure. I remarked to those who 
were with me in this very establishment at Philadelphia, that 
the criminals who had been there long, were deaf. They, who 
were in the habit of seeing these men constantly, were per- 
fectly amazed at the idea, which they regarded as groundless 
and fanciful. And yet the very Grst prisoner to whom they ap- 
pealed — one of their own selection — conGrmed my impression 
(which was unknown to him) instantly, and said, with a genuine 
air it was impossible to doubt, that he couldn't think how it 
happened, but he was growing very dull of hearing. 

That it is a singularly unequal punishment, and affects the 
worst man least, there is no doubt. In its superior efficiency 
as a means of reformation, compared with that other code of 
regulations which allows the prisoners to work in company 
without communicating together, I have not the smallest faith. 
All the instances of reformation that were mentioned to me, 
were of a kind that might have been— and I have no doubt 
whatever, in my own mind, would have been — equally well 
brought about by the Silent System. With regard to such men 



136 



PHILADELPHIA, AND 



as the negro burglar and the English thief, even the most enthu- 
siastic have scarcely any hope of their conversion. 

It seems to me that the objection that nothing wholesome 
or good has ever had its growth in such unnatural solitude, and 
that even a dog or any of the more intelligent among beasts, 
would pine, and mope, and rust away, beneath its influence, 
would be in itself a sufficient argument against this system. 
But when we recollect, in addition, how very cruel and severe 
it is, and that a solitary life is always liable to peculiar and 
distinct objections of a most deplorable nature, which have 
arisen here ; and call to mind, moreover, that the choice is not 
between this system, and a bad or ill-considered one, but 
between it and another which has worked well, and is, in its 
whole design and practice, excellent; there is surely more 
than sufficient reason for abandoning a mode of punishment at- 
tended by so little hope or promise, and fraught, beyond dispute, 
with such a host of evils. 

As a relief to its contemplation, I will close this chapter with 
a curious story, arising out of the same theme, which was 
related to m?, on the occasion of this visit, by some of the 
gentlemen concerned. 

At one of the periodical meetings of the inspectors of this 
prison, a working man of Philadelphia presented himself 
before the Board, and earnestly requested to be placed in soli- 
tary confinement. On being asked what motive could pos- 
sibly prompt him to make this strange demand, he answered 
that he had an irresistible propensity to get drunk ; that he was 
constantly indulging it, to his great misery and ruin ; that he 
had no power of resistance ; that he wished to be put beyond 
the reach of temptation ; and that he could think of no better 
way than this. It was pointed out to him, in reply, that the 
prison was for criminals who had been tried and sentenced by 
the law, and could not be made available for any such fanciful 
purposes ; he was exhorted to abstain from intoxicating drinks, 
as he surely might if he would ; and received other very good 
advice, with which he retired, exceedingly dissatisfied with the 
result of his application. 



ITS SOLITARY PRISON. 



137 



He came again, and again, and again, and was so very 
earnest and importunate, that at last they took counsel together, 
and said, "He will certainly qualify himself for admission, if 
we reject him any more. Let us shut him up. He will soon 
be glad to go away, and then we shall get rid of him." So they 
made him sign a statement which would prevent his ever 
sustaining an action for false imprisonment, to the effect that 
his incarceration was voluntary, and of his own seeking ; they 
requested him to take notice that the officer in attendance had 
orders to release him at any hour of the day or night, when he 
might knock upon his door for that purpose ; but desired him 
to understand, that once going out, he would not be admitted 
any more. These conditions agreed upon, and he still re- 
maining in the same mind, he was conducted to the prison, and 
shut up in one of the cells. 

In this cell, the man, who had not the firmness to leave a 
glass of liquor standing untasted on a table before him — in this 
cell, in solitary confinement, and working every day at his 
trade of shoemaking, this man remained nearly two years. - 
His health beginning to fail at the expiration of that time, the 
surgeon recommended that he should work occasionally in the 
garden ; and as he liked the notion very much, he went about 
this new occupation with great cheerfulness. 

He was digging here, one summer day, very industriously, 
when the wicket in the outer gate chanced to be left open ; 
showing , beyond, the well-remembered dusty road and sun- 
burnt fields. The way was as free to him as to any man 
living, but he no sooner raised his head and caught sight of it, 
all shining in the light, than, with the involuntary instinct of 
a prisoner, he cast away his spade, scampered off as fast as his 
legs would carry him, and never once looked back. 



■WASHINGTON 7 . 



CHAPTER THE EIGHTH 



WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE, AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 

\Ye left Philadelphia by steamboat, at six o'clock one very 
cold morning, and turned our faces towards Washington. 

In the course of this clay's journey, as on subsequent occasions, 
we encountered some Englishmen (small farmers perhaps, or 
country publicans at home) who were settled in An.erica, and 
were travelling on their own affairs. Of all grades and kinds 
of men that jostle one in the public conveyances of the States, 
these are often the most intolerable and the most insufferable 
companions. United to every disagreeable characteristic that 
the worst kind of Amer ican travellers possess, these countrymen 
of ours display an amount of insolent conceit and cool assumption 
of superiority, quite monstrous to behold. In the coarse fami- 
liarity of their approach, and the effrontery of their inquisitivc- 
ness (which they arc in great haste to assert, as if they panted to 
revenge themselves upon the decentoldrestraints of home), they 
surpass any native specimens that came within my range of 
observation : and I often grew so patriotic when I saw and 
heard them, that I would cheerfully have submitted to a 
reasonable fine, if I could have given any other country in the 
whole world, the honour of claiming them for its children. 

As Washington may be called the headquarters of tobacco- 
tinctured saliva, the time is come when I must confess, without 
any disguise, that the prevalence of those two odious practices 
of chewing and expectorating began about this time to be 
anything but agreeable, and soon became most offensive and 



WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE, 



sickening. In all the public places of America, this filthy 
custom is recognised. In the courts of law, the judge has his 
spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his; 
while the jurymen and spectators are provided for, as so many 
men who in the course of nature must desire to spit incessantly. 
In the hospitals, the students of medicine are requested, by 
notices upon the wall, to eject their tobacco juice into the boxes 
provided for that purpose, and not to discolour the stairs. In 
public buildings, visitors are implored, through the same agency, 
to squirt the essence of their quids, or " plugs," as I haveheard 
them called by gentlemen learned in this kind of sweetmeat, 
into the national spittoons, and not about the basis of the marble 
columns. But in some parts, this custom is inseparably mixed 
up with every meal and morning call, and with all the transac- 
tions of social life. The stranger, who follows in the track I 
took myself, will find it in its full bloom and glory, luxuriant 
in all its alarming recklessness, at Washington. And let him 
not persuade himself (as I once did, to my shame), that previous 
tourists have exaggerated its extent. The thing itself is an 
exaggeration oinastiness, which cannot be outdone. 

Onboard this steamboat, there were two young gentlemen, 
with] shirt-collars reversed as usual, and armed with very big 
walking-sticks ; who planted two seats in the middle of the deck, 
at a distance of some four paces apart ; took out their tobacco- 
boxes; and sat down opposite each other, to chew. In less 
than a quarter of an hour's time, these hopeful youths had shed 
about them on the clean boards, a copious shower of yellow 
rain ; clearing, by that means, a kind of magic circle, within 
whose limits no intruders dared to come, and which they never 
failed to refresh and re-refresh before a spot was dry. This 
being before breakfast, rather disposed me, I confess, to nausea; 
but looking attentively at one of the cxpectoraters, I plainly 
saw that he was young in chewing, and felt inwardly uneasy,*^ 
himself. A glow of delight came over me at this discovery ; 
and as I marked his face turn paler and paler, and saw the ball 
of tobacco in his left cheek, quiver with his suppressed agony, 
while yet he spat, and chewed, and spat again, in emulation of 



A>"D THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 



143 



his older friend, I could have follea on his neck and implored 
him to go on for hours. 

We all sat down to a comfortable breakfast in the cabin below, 
where there was no more hurry or confusion than at such a 
meal in England, and where th?re was certainly greater polite- 
ness exhibited than at most of our stage-coach banquets. At 
about nine o'clock we arrived at the railroad station, and went 
on by the cars. At noon we turned out again, to cross a wide 
river in another steamboat ; landed at a continuation of the rail- 
road on the opposite shore ; and went on by other cars ; in 
w hich, in the course of the next hour or so, we crossed, by 
wooden bridges, each a mile in length, two creeks, called res- 
pectively Great and Little Gunpowder. The water in both w as 
blackened with flights of canvas-backed ducks, which are most 
delicious eating, and abound hereabouts at that season of the 
year. 

These bridges are of wood, have no parapet, and are only 
just wide enough for the passage of the trains; which, in the 
event of the smallest accident, w T ould inevitably be plunged into 
the river. They are startling contrivances, a nd arc most agree- 
able when passed. 

We stopped to dine at Baltimore, and being now in Maryland, 
were waited on, for the first time, by slaves. The sensation of 
exacting any service from human creatures who are bought and 
sold, and being, for the time, a party as it were to their condi- 
tion, is not an enviable one. The institution exists, perhaps, in 
its least repulsive and most mitigated form in such a town as 
this; but it is slavery; and though I was, with respect to it, an 
innocent man, its presence filled me w ith a sense of shame and 
self-reproach. 

After dinner, w T c went down to the railroad again, and took 
our seats in the cars for Washington. Being rather early, those 
men and boys who happened to have nothing particular to do, 
and were curious in foreigners, came (according to custom) 
round the carriage in which I sat ; let down all the windows ; 
thrust in their heads and shoulders ; hooked themselves on con- 
veniently, by their elbows; and fell to comparing notes on the 



144 



WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE, 



subject of my personal appearance, with as much indifference 
as if I were a stuffed figure. I never gained so much uncom- 
promising information with reference to my own nose and 
eyes, the various impressions wrought by my mouth and chin 
on different minds, and how my head looks when it is viewed 
from behind, as on these occasions. Some gentlemen were only 
satisfied by exercising their sense of touch ; and the boys (who 
are surprisingly precocious in America) were seldom satisfied, 
even by that, but would return to the charge over and over 
again. Many a budding president has walked into my room 
with his cap on his head and his hands in his pockets, and stared 
at me for two whole hours : occasionally refreshing himself with 
atwcak at his nose, or a draught from the water -jug ; or by walk- 
ing to the windows and inviting other boys in the street below, 
to come up and do likewise : crying, u Here he is! " "Come on!" 
" Bring all your brothers ! " with other hospitable entreaties of 
that nature. 

We reached Washington at about half-past six that evening, 
and had upon the way a beautiful view of the Capitol, which is 
a fine building of the Corinthian order, placed upon a noble and 
commanding eminence. Arrived at the hotel, I saw no more of 
the place that night ; being very tired, and glad to gel to bed. 

Breakfast over next morning, I walk about the streets for an 
hour or two, and, coming home, throw up the window in the 
front and back, and look out. Here is Washington, fresh in my 
mind and under my eye. 

Take the worst parts of the City Road and Pentonville, pre- 
serving all their oddities, but especially the small shops and 
dwellings, occupied there (but not in Washington) by furniture- 
brokers, keepers of poor eating-houses, and fanciers of birds. 
Burn the whole down ; build it up again in wood and plaster ; 
widen it a little ; throw in part of St-John's Wood ; put green 
blinds outside all the private houses, with a red curtain and a 
j" w hi te^nTTn^evelT"^ inddw"f plough up all the roads ; plant a 
great deal of coarse turf in every place where it ought not to 
be : erect three handsome buildings in stone and marble, any- 
where, but the more entirely out of everybody's way the better : 



XSD THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 



145 



call one the Post Office, one the Patent Office, and one the 
Treasury ; make it scorching hot in the morning, and freezing 
cold in the afternoon, with an occasional tornado of wind and 
dust ; leave a brick-Geld without th'e*lJffclis7in all central places 
where a street may naturally be expected : and that's Wash- 
ington. 



The hotel in which we live, is a long row of small houses 
fronting on the street, and opening at the back upon a common 
yard, in which hangs a great triangle. Whenever a servant is 
wanted, somebody beats on this triangle from one stroke up to 
seven, according to the number of the house in which his pre- 
sence is required : and as all the servants are always being 
wanted, and none of them ever come, this enlivening engine is 
in full performance the whole day through. Clothes are drying 
in this same yard : female slaves, with cotton handkerchiefs 
twisted round their heads, are running to and fro on the hotel 
business ; black waiters cross and rccross with dishes in their 
hands ; two great dogs are playing upon a mound of loose bricks 
in the centre of the little square ; a pig is turning up his sto- 
mach to the sun, and grunting " that's comfortable ! "j and 
neither the men, nor the women, nor the dogs, nor the pig, nor 
any created creature, takes the smallest notice of the triangle, 
which is tingling madly all the time. 

I walk to the front window, and look across the road upon a 
long, straggling row of houses, one story high, terminating, 
nearly opposite, but a litlle to the left, in a melancholy piece 
of waste ground with frowzy grass, which looks like a small 
piece of country that has taken to drinking, and has quite lost 
itself. Standing anyhow and all wrong, upon this open space, 
like something meteoric that has fallen down from the moon, is 
an odd, lop-sided, one-eyed kind of wooden building, that looks 
like a church, with a flag-staff as long as itself sticking out of a 
steeple something larger than a tea-chest. Under the window, 
is a small stand of coaches, whose slave-drivers are sunning 
themselves on the steps of our door, and talcing idly together. 
The three most obtrusive houses near at hand, arc the three 
meanest. On one—a shop, which never has anything in the 




10 



146 WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE, 

window, and never has the door open— is painted in large cha- 
racters, "The City Lunch." At another; which looks like the 
backway t p somewh er e rise, bat is an independent building: in 
itself, oysters are procurable in every style. At the third, 
which is a very, very little tailor's shop, pants are fixed to 
order : or, in other words, pantaloons are made to measure. 
And that is our street in Washington. 

It is sometimes called the City of Magnificent Distances, but 
it might with greater propriety be termed the City of Magnifi- 
cent Intentions ; for it is only on taking a bird's-eye view of it 
from the top of the Capitol, that one can at all comprehend 
the vast designs of its projector, an aspiring Frenchman. Spa- 
cious avenues, that begin in nothing, and lead nowhere ; streets, 
mile-long, that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants • pub- 
lic buildings that need but a public to be complete ; and orna- 
ments of great thoroughfares, which only lack great thorough- 
fares to ornament, are its leading features. One might fancy 
the season over, and most of the houses gone out of town for 
ever with their masters. To the admirers of cities it is a Bar- 
mecide Feast; a pleasant field for the imagination to rove in ; 
a monument raised to a deceased project, with not even a 
legible inscription to record its departed greatness. 

Such as it is, it is likely to remain. It was originally chosen 
for the seat of Government, as a means of averting the conflict- 
ing jealousies and interests of the different States j and very 
probably, too, as being remote from mobs : a consideration not 
to be slighted, even in America. It has no trade or commerce 
of its own : having little or no population beyond the President 
and his establishment ; the members of the legislature who 
reside there during the session ; the Government clerks and 
officers employed in the various departments ; the keepers of 
the hotels and boarding-houses; and the tradesmen who supply 
their tables. It is very unhealthy. Few people would live in 
Washington, I take it, who were not obliged to reside there; 
and the tides of emigration and speculation, those rapid and 
regardless currents, are little likely to flow at any time towards 
such dull and sluggish water. 



AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 



147 



The principal features of the Capitol, are, of course, the two 
Houses of Assembly. But there is, besides, in the centre of the 
building, a fine rotunda, ninety-six feet in diameter, and 
ninety-six high, whose circular wall is divided into compart- 
ments, ornamented by historical pictures. Four of these have 
for their subjects prominent events in the revolutionary struggle. 
They were painted by Colonel Trumbull, himself a member of 
Washington s staff at the time of their occurrence j from which 
circumstance they derive a peculiar interest of their own. In 
this same hall Mr. Greenough's large statue of Washington has 
been lately placed. It has great merits of course, but it struck 
me as being rather strained and violent for its subject. I could 
wish, however, to have seen it in a better light than it can ever 
be viewed in, where it stands. 

There is a very pleasant and commodious library in the 
Capitol ; and from a balcony in front, the bird's-eye view, of 
which I have just spoken, may be had, together with a beautiful 
prospect of the adjacent country. In one of the ornamented 
portions of the building, there is a figure of Justice; where- 
unto the Guide Book says, "the artist at first contemplated 
giving more of nudity, but he was warned that the public sen- 
timent in this country would not admit of it, and in his caution 
he has gone, perhaps, into the opposite extreme." Poor 
Justice ! she has been made to wear much stranger garments 
in America than those she pines in, in the Capitol. Let us hope 
that she has changed her dress maker since they were fashioned, 
and that the public sentiment of the country did not cut out the 
clothes she hides her lovely figure in, just now. 

The House of Representatives is a beautiful and spacious hall, 
of semi-circular shape, supported by handsome pillars. One 
part of the gallery is appropriated to the ladies, and there they 
sit in front rows, and come in, and go out, as at play or concert i 
The chair is canopied, and raised considerably above the floor 
of the House ; and every member has an easy chair and a writ- 
ing desk to himself •. which is denounced by some people out of 
doors as a most unfortunate and injudicious arrangement, 
tending to long sittings and prosaic speeches. It is an elegant 



148 



WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE, 



chamber to look at, but a singularly bad one for all purposes of 
hearing. The Senate, which is smaller, is free from this objec- 
tion, and is exceedingly well adapted to the uses for which it is 
designed. The sittings, I need hardly add, take place in the 
day ; and the parliamentary forms arc modelled on those of the 
old country. 

I was sometimes asked, in my progress through other places, 
whether I had not been very much impressed by the heads of 
the lawmakers at Washington • meaning not their chiefs and 
leaders, but literally their individual and personal heads, 
whereon their hair grew, and whereby the phrenological cha- 
racter of each legislator was expressed • and I almost as often 
struck my questioner dumb with indignant consternation by 
answering u No, that I didn't remember being at all overcome.' 7 
As I must, at whatever hazard, repeat the avowal here, I will 
follow it up by relating my impressions on this subject in as few 
words as possible. 

In the first place— it may be from some imperfect develop- 
ment of my organ of veneration — I do not remember having 
ever fainted away, or having even been moved to tears of 
joyful pride, at sight of any legislative body. I have borne the 
House of Commons like a man, and have yielded to no weak- 
ness, but slumber, in the House of Lords. I have seen elections 
for borough and county, and have never been impelled (no 
matter which parly won) to damage my hat by throwing it up 
into the air in triumph, or to crack my voice by shouting forth 
any reference to our Glorious Constitution, to the noble purity 
of our independent voters, or the unimpeachable integrity of our 
independent members. Having withstood such strong attacks 
upon my fortitude, it is possible that I may be of a cold and 
insensible temperament, amounting to icyness, in such matters; 
and therefore my impressions of the live pillars of the Capitol 
at Washington must be received with such grains of allowance 
as this free confession may seem to demand. 

Bid I see in this public body, an assemblage of men, bound 
together in the sacred names of Liberty and Freedom, and so 
asserting the chaste dignity of those twin goddesses, in all their 



AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 



14!) 



discussions, as to exalt at once the Eternal Principles to which 
their names are given, and their own character, and the cha- 
racter of their countrymen, in the admiring eyes of the whole 
world ? 

It was but a week, since an aged, grey-haired man, a lasting 
honour to the land that gave him birth, who has done good 
service to his country, as his forefathers did, and who will be 
remembered scores upon scores of years after the worms bred 
in its corruption, are but so many grains of dust — it was but a 
week, since this old man had stood for days upon his trial before 
this very body, charged with having dared to assert the infamy 
of that traffic, which has for its accursed merchandize men and 
women, and their unborn children. Yes. And publicly ex- 
hibited in the same city all the v hile ; gilded, framed and glazed ; 
hung up for general admiration; shown to strangers not with 
shame, but pride; its face not turned towards the wall, itself 
not taken down and burned ; is the Unanimous Declaration of 
The Thirteen United States of America, w hich solemnly declares 
that Ail Men are created Equal; and arc endowed by their 
Creator with the Inalienable ttights of Life, Liberty, and the 
Pursuit of Happiness ! 

It was not a month, since this same body had sat calmly by, 
and heard a man, one of themselves, with oaths which beggars 
in their drink reject, threaten to cut another's throat from car 
to ear. There he sat, among them ; not crushed by the general 
feeling of the assembly, but as good a man as any. 

There was but a week to come, and another of that body, for 
doing his duty to those who sent him there ; for claiming in a 
Republic the Liberty and Freedom of expressing their senti- 
ments, and making known their prayer; would be tried, found 
guilty, and have strong censure passed upon him by the rest. 
His was a grave offence indeed ; for years before, he had risen 
up and said, U A gang of male and female slaves for sale, 
warranted to breed like cattle, linked to each other by iron 
fetters, are passing now along the open street beneath the 
windows of your Temple of Equality ! Look ! " But there are 
many kinds of hunters engaged in the Pursuit of Happiness 



150 



WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE, 



and they go variously armed. It is the Inalienable Right oF 
some among them, to take the Celd after their Happiness, 
equipped with cat and cartwhip, stocks, and iron collar, and 
to shout their view halloa ! (always in praise of Liberty), to the 
music of clanking chains and bloody stripes. 

Where sat the many legislators of coarse threats ; of words 
and blows such as coalheavers deal upon each other, when they 
forget their breeding ? On every side. Every session had its 
anecdotes of that kind, and the actors were all there. 

Did I recognise in this assembly, a body of men, who apply- 
ing themselves in a new world to correct some of the falsehoods 
and vices of the old, purified the avenues to Public Life, paved 
the dirty ways to Place and Power, debated and made laws for 
the Common Good, and had no party but their Country? 

I saw in them, the wheels that move the meanest perversion 
of virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever 
wrought. Despicable trickery at elections ; under-handed 
tamperings with public officers ; cowardly attacks upon op- 
ponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens 
for daggers ; shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves, whose 
claim to be considered, is, that every day and week they sow 
new crops of ruin with their venal types, which are the 
dragon's teeth of yore, in everything but sharpness ; aidings 
and abettings of every bad inclination in the popular mind, and 
artful suppressions of all its good influences : such things as 
these, and in a word, Dishonest Faction in its most depraved 
and most unblushing form, stared out from every corner of the 
crowded hall. 

Did I see among them, the intelligence and refinement : the 
true, honest, patriotic heart of America ? Here and there, 
were drops of its blood and life, but they scarcely coloured the 
stream of desperate adventurers which sets that way for profit 
and for pay. It is the game of these men, and of their profli- 
gate organs, to make the strife of politics so fierce and brutal, 
and so destructive of all self-respect in worthy men, that sensi- 
tive and delicate-minded persons shall be kept aloof, and they, 
and such as they, be left to battle out their selfish views, 



AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 



151 



unchecked. And thus this lowest of all scrambling fights goes 
on, and they who in other countries would, from their intelli- 
gence and station, most aspire to make the laws, do here recoil 
the farthest from that degradation. 

That there are, among the representatives of the people in 
both Houses, and among all parties, some men of high character 
and great abilities, I need not say. The foremost among those 
politicians who arc known in Europe, have been already de- 
scribed, and I sec no reason to depart from the rule I have laid 
down for my guidance, of abstaining from all mention of indi- 
viduals. It will be sufficient to add, that to the most favour- 
able accounts that have been written of them, I more than fully 
and most heartily subscribe ; and that personal intercourse and 
free communication have bred within me, not the result pre- 
dicted in the very doubtful proverb, but increased admiration 
and respect. They are striking men to look at, hard to deceive, 
prompt to act, lions in energy, Crichtons in varied accomplish- 
ment, Indians in fire of eye and gesture, Americans in strong 
and generous impulse j and they as well represent the honour 
and wisdom of their country at home, as the distinguished 
genlleman who is now its minister at the British Court sustains 
its highest character abroad. 

I visited both houses nearly every day, during my stay in 
Washington. On my initiatory visit to the House of Represen- 
tatives, they divided against a decision of the chair; but the 
chair won. The second time I went, the member who was 
speaking, being interrupted by a laugh, mimicked it, as one 
child would in quarrelling w ith another, and added, u that he 
would make honourable gentlemen opposite, sing out a little 
more on the other side of their mouths presently." But inter- 
ruptions are rare; the speaker being usually heard in silence. 
There are more quarrels than with us, and more threatenings 
than gentlemen are accustomed to exchange in any civilised 
society of which we have record ; but farm-yard imitations 
have not as yet been imported from the Parliament of the United 
Kingdom. The feature in oratory which appears to be the 
most practiced, and most relished, is the constant repetition of 



152 



WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE, 



the same idea or shadow of an idea in fresh words ; and the in- 
quiry out of doors is not, "What did he say? " but, "How 
long did he speak?" These, however, are but enlargements 
of a principle which prevails elsewhere. 

The Senate is a dignified and decorous body, and its proceed- 
ings are conducted with much gravity and order. Both houses 
are handsomely carpeted ; but the state to which these carpets 
are reduced by the • universal disregard of the spittoon with 
which every honourable member is accommodated, and the ex- 
traordinary improvements on the pattern which are squirted 
and dabbled upon it in every direction, do not admit of being 
described. I will merely observe, that I strongly recommend 
all strangers not to look at the floor ; and if they happen to drop 
anything, though it be: their purse, not to pick it up with an 
ungloved hand on any account. 

It is somewhat remarkable too, at first, to say the least, to 
see so many honourable members with swelled faces ; and it is 
scarcely less remarkable to discover that this appearance is 
caused by the quantity of tobacco they contrive to stow within 
the hollow of the cheek. It is strange enough too, to see an 
honourable gentleman leaning back in his tilted chair with his 
legs on the desk before him, shaping a convenient "plug" with 
his penknife, and when it is quite ready for use, shooting the 
old one from his mouth, as from a pop-gun, and clapping the 
new one in its place. 

I was surprised to observe that even steady old chewers of 
great experience, are not always good marksmen, which has 
rather inclined me to doubt that general proficiency with the 
rifle, of which we have heard so much in England. Several 
gentlemen called upon me who, in the course of conversation, 
frequently missed the spittoon at five paces ; and one (but he was 
certainly short-sighted) mistook the closed sash for the open 
window, at three. On another occasion, when I dined out, 
and was sitting with two ladies and some gentlemen round a 
fire before dinner, one of the company fell short of the fire- 
place, six distinct limes. I am disposed to think, however, that 
this was occasioned by his not aiming at that object.; as there 



AND THE PRESlDEiNT'S HOLSE. 



153 



was a white marble hearth before the fender, which was more 
convenient, and may have suited his purpose better. 

The Patent Office at Washington, furnishes an extraordinary 
example of American enterprise and ingenuity \ for the immense 
number of models it contains, are the accumulated inventions 
of only five years ; the whole of the previous collection having 
been destroyed by fire. The elegant structure in which they 
are arranged, is one of design rather than execution, for there 
is but one side erected out of four, though the works are 
stopped. The Post Office, is a very compact, and very beautiful 
building. In one of the departments, among a collection of 
rare and curious articles, are deposited the presents which have 
been made from lime to time to the American ambassadors at 
foreign courts by the various potentates to whom they were 
the accredited agents of the Republic : gifts which by the law 
they are not permitted to retain. I confess that I looked upon 
this as a very painful exhibition, and one by no means flatter- 
ing to the national standard of honesty and honour. That can 
scarcely be a high state of moral feeling which imagines a 
gentleman of repute and station, likely to be corrupted, in the 
discharge of his duty, by the present of a snuff-box, or a richly- 
mounted sword, or an Eastern shawl ; and surely the Nation 
who reposes confidence in her appointed servants, is likely to 
be better served, than she who makes them the subject of such 
very mean and paltry suspicions. 

At George Town, in the suburbs, there is a Jesuit College; 
delightfully situated, and, so far as I had an opportunity of 
seeing, well managed. Many persons who are not members of 
the Romish Church, avail themselves, I believe, of these insti- 
tutions, and of the advantageous opportunities they afford for 
the education of their children. The heights in this neigh- 
bourhood, above the Potomac River, are very picturesque ; and 
are free, I should conceive, from some of the insalubrities of 
Washington. The air, at that elevation, was quite cool and 
refreshing, when in the city it was burning hot. 

The President's mansion is more like an English club-house, 
both within and without, than any other kind of establishment 



154 



WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE, 



with which I can compare it. The ornamental ground about it 
has been laid out in garden walks ; they are pretty, and agree- 
able to the eye; though they have that uncomfortable air of 
having been made yesterday, which is far from favourable to 
the display of such beauties. 

My first visit to this house was on the morning after my 
arrival, when I was carried thither by an official gentleman, 
who was so kind as to charge himself with my presentation to 
the President. 

We entered a large hall, and having twice or thrice rung a 
bell which nobody answ ered, walked w ithout further ceremony 
through the rooms on the ground floor, as divers other gentle- 
men (mostly with their hats on, and their hands in their pockets) 
were doing very leisurely. Some of these had ladies with 
them, to whom they were showing the premises; others were 
lounging on the chairs and sofas ; others, in a perfect state of 
exhaustion from listlessness, were yawning drearily. The 
greater portion of this assemblage w r ere rather asserting their 
supremacy than doing anything else, as they had no particular 
business there, that anybody knew of. A few were closely 
eyeing the moveables, as if to make quite sure that the Presi 
dent (who was far from popular) had not made away with any 
of the furniture, or sold the fixtures for his private benefit. 

After glancing at these loungers; who were scattered over a 
pretty drawing-room, opening upon a terrace which command- 
ed a beautiful prospect of the river and the adjacent country; 
and who were sauntering too, about a larger state room called 
the Eastern Drawing-room ; we went up stairs into another 
chamber, where were certain visitors, waiting for audiences. 
At sight of my conductor, a black in plain clothes and yellow 
slippers who waS gliding noiselessly about, and whispering 
messages in the ears of the more impalient, made a sign of 
recognition, and glided off to announce him. 

We had previously looked into another chamber fitted all 
round with a great bare wooden desk or counter, whereon lay 
files of newspapers, to which sundry gentlemen were referring. 
But there were no such means of beguiling the time in this 



A>D THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 



155 



apartment, which was as unpromising and tiresome as any 
waiting room in one of our public establishments, or any 
physician's dining-room during his hours of consultation at 
home. 

There were some fifteen or twenty persons in the room. 
One, a tall, wiry, muscular old man, from the west; sunburnt 
and swarthy ; with a brown-white hat on his knees, and a giant 
umbrella resting between his legs; who sat bolt upright in 
his chair, frowning steadily at the carpet, and twitching the 
hard lines about his mouth, as if he made up his mind u to 
fix" the President on what he had to say, and wouldn't bate 
him a grain. Another, a Kentucky farmer, six-feet-six in 
height, with his hat on, and his hands under his coat-tails, who 
leaned against the wall and kicked the floor with his heel, as 
though he had Time s head under his shoe, and were literally 
H killing 15 him. A third, an oval-faced, bilious-looking man, 
with sleek black hair cropped close, and whiskers, and beard 
shaved down to blue dots, who sucked the head of a thick stick, 
and from time to time took it out of his mouth, to see how it 
was getting on. A fourth did nothing but whistle. A fifth did 
nothing but spit. And indeed all these gentlemen were so 
very persevering and energetic in this latter particular, and 
besloved their favours so abundantly upon the carpet, that I 
take it for granted the Presidential housemaids have high 
wages, or, to speak more genteelly, an ample amount of "com- 
pensation : which is the American word for salary, in the 
case of all public servants. 

We had not waited in this room many minutes, before the 
black messenger returned, and conducted us into another of 
smaller dimensions, where, at a business-like table covered 
with papers, sat the President himself. He looked somewhat 
worn and anxious, and well he might : being at war with 
everybody— but the expression of his face was mild and plea- 
sant, and his manner was remarkably unaffected, gentlemanly, 
and agreeable. I thought that in his whole carriage and 
d< moanour, he became his station singularly well. 

Being advised that the sensible etiquette of the republican 



166 



WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE, 



court, admitted of a traveller, like myself, declining, without 
any impropriety, an invitation to dinner, which did not reach 
me until I had concluded my arrangements for leaving Wash- 
ington some days before that to which it referred, I only 
returned to this house once. It was on the occasion of one 
of those general assemblies which arc held on certain nights 
between the hours of nine and twelve o'clock, and are called, 
rather oddly, Levees. 

I went, with my wife, at about ten. There was a pretty 
dense crowd of carriages and people in the court-yard, and so 
far as I could make out, there were no very clear regulations 
for the taking up or setting down of company. There were 
certainly no policemen to soothe startled horses, cither by 
sawing at their bridles or flourishing truncheons in their eyes ; 
and I am ready to make oath that no inoffensive persons 
were knocked violently on the head, or poked acutely in their 
backs or stomachs 3 or brought to a stand-still by any such 
gentle means, and then taken into custody for not moving on. 
But there was no confusion or disorder. Our carriage reached 
the porch in its turn, without any blustering, swearing, shout- 
ing, backing, or other disturbance ; and we dismounted with 
as much ease and comfort as though we had been escorted by 
the whole Metropolitan Force from A to Z inclusive. 

The suite of rooms on the ground-floor, were lighted up ; and 
a military band was playing in the hall. In the smaller drawing- 
room, the centre of a circle of company, were the President 
and his daughter-in-law, who acted as the lady of the mansion : 
and a very interesting, graceful, and accomplished lady too. 
One gentleman who stood among this group, appeared to take 
upon himself the functions of a master of the ceremonies. I saw 
no other officers or attendants, and none were needed. 

The great drawing-room, which I have already mentioned, 
and the other chambers on the ground- floor, were crowded to 
excess. The company was not, in our sense of the term, select, 
for it comprehended persons of very many grades and classes ; 
nor was there any great display of costly attire ; indeed some of 
the costumes may .have been, for aught I know, grotesque 



AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 



157 



enough. But the decorum and propriety of behaviour which 
prevailed, were unbroken by any rude or disagreeable inci- 
dent ; and every man, even among the miscellaneous crowd in 
the hall who were admitted without any orders or tickets to look 
on, appeared to feel that he was a part of the Institution, and 
was responsible for its preserving a becoming character, and 
appearing to the best advantage. 

That these visitors, too, whatever their station, were not 
without some reflnement of taste and appreciation of intellectual 
gifts, and gratitude to those men who, by the peaceful exercise 
of great abilities, shed new charms and associations upon the 
homes of their countrymen, and elevate their character in other 
lands, was most earnestly testified by their reception of Wash- 
ington Irving, my dear friend, who had recently been appointed 
Minister at the court of Spain, and who was among them that 
night, in his new character, for the first and last time before 
going abroad. I sincerely believe that in all the madness of 
American politics, few public men would have been so earnestly, 
devotedly, and affectionately caressed, as this most charming 
writer : and I have seldom respected a public assembly more, 
than I did this eager throng, when I saw them turning with 
one mind from noisy orators and officers of state, and flocking 
with a generous and honest impulse round the man of quiet 
pursuits : proud in his promotion as reflecting back upon their 
country : and grateful to him with their whole hearts for the 
store of graceful fancies he had poured out among them. Long 
may he dispense such treasures with unsparing hand ; and long 
may they remember him as worthily ! 



The term we had assigned for the duration of our stay in 
Washington, was now at an end, and we were to begin to travel ; 
for the railroad distances we had traversed yet, in journeying 



158 



WASHINGTON. 



among these older towns, are on that great continent looked 
upon as nothing. 

I had at first intended going South — to Charleston. But 
when I came to consider the length of time which this journey 
would occupy, and the premature heat of the season, which 
even at Washington had been often very trying ; and weighed 
moreover, in my own mind, the pain of living in the constant 
contemplation of slavery, against the more than doubtful chances 
of my ever seeing it, in the time I had to spare, stripped of the 
disguises in which it would certainly be dressed, and so adding 
any item to the host of facts already heaped together on the sub- 
ject ; I began to listen to old whisperings which had often been 
present to meat home in England, when I little thought of ever 
being here; and to dream again of cities growing up, like pa- 
laces in fairy tales, among the wilds and forests of the west. 

The advice I received in most quarters when I began to yield 
to my desire of travelling towards that point of the compass was, 
according to custom, sufficiently cheerless s my companion being 
threatened with more perils, dangers, and discomforts, than I 
can remember or would catalogue if I could; but of which it 
will be sufficient to remark that bio wings-up in steam boats 
and breakings down in coaches were among the least. But, 
having a western route sketched out for me by the best and 
kindest authority to which I could have resorted, and putting 
no great faith in these discouragements, I soon determined on 
my plan of action. 

This was to travel south, only to Richmond in Virginia • and 
then to turn, and shape our course for the Far West j whither I 
beseech the reader's company. 



TO 



RICHMOND AND HARRTSBURGH. 



CHAPTER THE NINTH. 



A MGHT STEAMER ON THE POTOMAC RIVER. A VIRGINIA ROAD, AND 
A BLACK DRIVER. RICHMOND. BALTIMORE. THE HARRISBUBGH MAIL 
AND A GLIMPSE OF THE CUV. A CANAL BOAT. 

We were to proceed in the first instance by steamboat : and 
as it is usual to s!eep on board, in consequence of the starting- 
hour being four o'clock in the morning, we went down to 
where she lay, at that very uncomfortable lime for such expe- 
ditions when slippers are most valuable, and a familiar bed, 
in the perspective of an hour or two, looks uncommonly 
pica ant. 

It is ten o'clock at night : say half-past ten : moonlight, warm, 
and dull enough. The steamer not unlike a child's Noah's ark 
in form, with the machinery on the top of the roof), is riding 
lazily up and down, and bumping clumsily against the wooden 
pier, as the ripple of the river trifles with its unwieldy carcase. 
The wharf is some distance from the city. There is nobody 
down here; and one or two dull lamps upon the steamer's 
decks are the only signs of life remaining, when our coach has 
driven away. As soon as our footsteps are heard upon the 
planks, a fat negress, particularly favoured by nature in re- 
spect of bustle, emerges from some dark stairs, and marshals 
my wife towards the ladies' cabin, to which retreat she 
goes, followed by a mighty bale of cloaks and great -coats. 
I valiantly resolve not to go to bed at all, but to walk up and 
down the pier till morning. 

1 begin my promenade-thinking of all kinds of distant things 

11 



162 A NIGHT STEAMKR ON THE POTOMAC RIVER. 



and persons, and of nothing near— and pace up and down for 
half-an-hour. Then I go on board again ; and gelling into the 
light of one of the lamps, look at my watch and think it must 
have stopped , and wonder what has become of the faithful 
secretary whom I brought along with me from Boston. He is 
supping with our late landlord (a Field Marshal, at least, no 
doubt ) in honour of our departure, and may be two hours 
longer. I walk again, but it gets duller and duller ; the moon 
goes dow T n: next June seems farther off in the dark, and the 
echoes of my footsteps make me nervous. It has turned cold 
too; and walking up and down without any companion in such 
lonely circumstances, is but poor amusement. So I break my 
staunch resolution, and think it may be, perhaps, as well to 
go to bed. 

I go on board again ; open the door of the gentlemen's cabin; 
and walk in. Somehow or other — from its being so quiet I 
suppose — I have taken it into my head that there is nobody 
there. To my horror and amazement it is full of sleepers in 
every stage, shape, attitude, and variety of slumber: in the 
berths, on the chairs, on the floors, on the tables, and particu- 
larly round the stove, my detested enemy. I take another step 
forward, and slip upon the shining face of a black steward, 
who lies rollen in a blanket on the floor. He jumps up, grins, 
half in pain and half in hospitality; whispers my own name in 
my ear; and groping among the sleepers, leads me to my berth. 
Standing beside it, I count these slumbering passengers, and 
get past forty. There is no use in going further, so I begin to 
undress. As ihc chairs are all occupied, and there is nothing 
else to put my clothes on, I deposit them upon the ground: 
not without soiling my hands, for it is in the same condition as 
the carpets in the Capitol, and from the same cause. Having 
but partially undressed, I clamber on my shelf, and hold the 
curtain open for a few minutes w hile I look round on all my 
fellow travellers again. That done, I let it fall on them, and 
on the world : turn round : and go to sleep. 

I wake, of course, when we get under weigh, for there is a 
good deal of noise. The day is then just breaking. Everybody 



A VIRGINIA ROAD. 



163 



wakes at the same time. Some are self-possessed directly, and 
some are much perplexed to make out where they are until 
they have rubbed their eyes, and leaning on one elbow, looked 
about them. Some yawn, some groan, nearly all spit, and a 
few get up. I am among the risers : for it is easy to feel, 
without going into the fresh air, that (he atmosphere of the 
cabin, is vile in the last degree. I huddle on my clothes, go 
down into the fore-cabin, get shaved by the barber, and wash 
myself. The washing and dressing apparatus for the passen- 
gers generally, consists of two jack towels, three small wooden 
basins, a keg of water and a ladle to serve it out with, six 
square inches of looking-glass, two ditto ditto of yellow soap, 
a comb rnd brush for the head, and nothing for the teelh. 
Everybody uses the comb and brush, except myself. Every- 
body stares to see me using my own; and two or three gentle- 
men are strongly disposed to banter me on my prejudices, but 
don't. When I have made my toilet, I go upon the hurricane- 
deck, and set in for two hours of hard walking up and down. 
The sun is rising brilliantly; we arc passing Mount Vernon 
where Washington lies buried; the river is wide and rapid; 
and its banks arc beautiful. All the glory and splendour of 
the day arc coming on, and growing brighter every minute. 

At eight o'clock, we breakfast in the cabin where I passed 
the night, but the w indows and doors are all thrown open, and 
now it is fresh enough. There is no hurry or greediness ap- 
parent in the despatch of the meal. It is longer than a travel- 
ling breakfast with us ; more orderly ; and more polite. 

Soon after nine o'clock we come to Potomac Creek, where we 
are to land : and then comes the oddest part of the journey. 
Seven stage-coaches are preparing to carry us on. Some of 
them are ready, some of them are not ready. Some of the 
drivers arc blacks, some whites. There are four horses to 
each coach, and all the horses, harnessed or unharnessed, are 
there. The passengers are getting out of the steamboat, and 
into the coaches; the luggage is being transferred in noisy 
wheelbarrows ; the horses are frightened, and impatient to 
start ; the black drivers are chattering to their like so many 



164 



A VIRGINIA ROAD. 



monkeys; and the while ones whooping like so many drovers : 
for the main thing to be done in all kinds of hostlcring here, is 
to make as much noise as possible. The coaches are something 
like the French coaches, but not nearly so good. In lieu of 
springs, they are hung on bands of the strongest leather. 
There is very little choice or difference between them; and 
they may be likened to the car portion of the swings at an 
English fair, roofed, put upon axle-trees and wheels, and 
curtained with painted canvas. They are covered with mild 
from the roof to the wheel-tire, and have never been cleaned 
since they w ere first built. 

The tickets we have received on board the steamboat are 
marked No. i, so we belong to coach Xo. 1. 1 throw my coal 
on the box, and hoist my wife and her maid into the inside. It 
has only one step, and that being about a yard from the 
ground, is usually approached by a chair: when there is no 
chair, ladies trust in Providence. The coach holds nine 
inside, having a seat across from door to door, w here we in 
England put our legs : so that there is only one feat more dif- 
ficult in the performance than getting in, and that is. getting 
out again. There is only one outside passenger, and he sits 
upon the box. As I am that one, I climb up ; and while Ihei 
are strapping the luggage on the roof, and heaping it into a 
kind of tray behind, have a good opportunity of looking at the 
driver. 

He is a negro — very black indeed. He is dressed in a coarse 
pepper-and-salt suit excessively patched and darned 'particu- 
larly at the knees), grey stockings, enormous unblacked high- 
low shoes, and very short trousers. He has two odd gloves 
one of parti-coloured worsted, and one of leather. He has a 
very short whip, broken in the middle and bandaged up tfilh 
string. And yet he wears a low-crowned, broad-brim.. '. 
black hat • faintly shadowing forth a kind of insane imihV : 
of an English coachman: But somebody in authority cries 
4< Go ahead!'' as I am making these observations. The mail 
takes the lead in a four-horse wagon, and all the coaches fol- 
low in procession : headed by No. 1 . 



AXD A BLACK DRIVER. 



1S5 



By the way, whenever an Englishman would cry "All right !" 
an American cries 1 * Go ahead \" which is somewhat expressive 
of the national character of the two countries. 

The first half mile of the road is over bridges made of loose 
planks laid across two parallel poles, which tilt up as the 
wheels roll over them ; and in the river. The river has a 
clayey bottom and is full of holes, so that half a horse is con- 
stantly disappearing unexpectedly, and can't be found again 
for some time. 

But we get past even this, and come to the road itself, 
which is a series of alternate swamps and gravel-pits. A 
tremendous place is close before us, the black driver rolls his 
. screws his mouth up very round, and looks straight 
between the two leaders, as if he were saying to himself, * ; we 
have done this often before, but now I think we shall have a 
crash.' He takes a rein in each hind ; jerks and pulls at 
both ; aud dances on the splashboard with both feet ^keeping 
hi? seat, of course; like the late lamented Ducrow on two of his 
fiery coursers. We come to the spot, sink down in the mire 
nearly to the coach windows, tilt on one side at an angle of 
forty-five degrees, and slick there. The insides scream dismal- 
ly . the coach stops ; the horses flounder ; all the other six 
coach s stop ; and their four-and-twenty horses flounder 
likewise : but merely for company, and in sympathy with ours. 
Then the following circumstances occur. 

Black Driver (to the horses . " Hi ! " 

Nothing happens. Insides scream again. • .-'i 
k Driver 'to the horses . " Ho!" 

Horses plunge, and splash the black driver. 

Gentleman inside (looking out) "Why, what on airlh — " 

G nlleman receives a variety of splashes and draws his 
head in again, without finishing his question or waiting for 
an answer. 

Black Driver (still to the horses). <; Jiddy ! Jidiy ! M 
Horses pull violently, drag the coach out of the hole, and 
draw it up a bank ; so sleep, that the black driver's legs fly up 
into the air, and he goes back among the luggage on the roof. 



165 



A VIRGINIA ROAD. 



But he immediately recovers himself, and cries (still to the 

horses), 
"Pill!" 

No effect. On the contrary, the coach begins to roll back 
upon No. 2, which rolls back upon No. 3, which rolls back 
upon No. 4, and so on, until No. 7 is heard to curse and 
swear, nearly a quarter of a mile behind. 

Black Driver (louder than before). "Pill!" 

Horses make another struggle to get up the bank, and again 
the coach rolls backward. 

Black Driver (louder than before). " Pc-e-e-ill ! " 

Horses make al'dcsperate struggle. 

Black Driver (recovering spirits), u Hi, Jiddy, Jiddy, 
Pill!" 

Horses make another effort. 

Black Driver (with great vigour). "Ally Loo! Hi. Jiddy, 
Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo!" 
Horses almost do it. 

Black Driver (with his eyes starting out of his head). 
" Lee, den. Lee, dere. Hi. Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo. 
Lee-e-e-e-e ! " 

They run up the bank, and go down again on the other 
side at the fearful pace. It is impossible to stop them, and at 
the bottom there is a deep hollow, full of water. The coach 
rolls frightfully. The insides scream. The mud and water 
fly about us. The black driver dances like a madman. Sud- 
denly we are all right by some extraordinary means, and stop 
to breathe. 

A black friend of the black driver is sitting on a fence. The 
black driver recognises him by twirling his head round and 
round like a harlequin, rolling his eyes, shrugging his shoul- 
ders, and grinning from ear to ear. He stops short, turns to 

me, and says : 

" We shall get you through sa, like a fiddle, and hope a 
please you when me get you through sa. Old 'ooman at home 
sir :" chuckling very much. ' c Outside gentleman sa, he 
often remember old'ooman at home sa," grinning again. 



Ricmiosp. 



167 



4 -Ave, aye, we'll take care of the old woman. Don't be 
afraid." 

The black driver grins again, bat there is another hole, and 
beyond that, another bank, close before us. So he stops short 
cries to the horses again) "Easy. Easy den. Ease, Steady. 
Hi . Jiddy. Pill. Ally. Loo," but never " Lee ! " until we 
are reduced to the very last extremity, and are in the midst of 
difficulties, extrication from which appears to be all but im- 
possible. 

And so we do the ten miles or thereabouts in two l ours ar d 
a half; breaking no bones, though bruising a great many; and 
in short getting through the distance, u like a fiddle." 

This singular kind of coaching terminates at Fredericks- 
burgh, whence there is a railway to Richmond. The tract of 
country through which it takes its course was once produc- 
tive : but the soil has been exhausted by the system of employing 
a great amount of slave labour in forcing crops, without 
strengthening the land : and it is now little better than a sandy 
desert overgrown with trees. Dreary and uninteresting as its 
aspect is, I was glad to the heart to find anything on which 
one of the curses of this horrible institution has fallen ; and had 
greater pleasure in contemplating the withered ground, than 
the richest and most thriving cultivation in the same place could 
possibly have a Horded me. 

In this district, as in all others where slavery sits brooding, j 
(1 have frequently heard this admitted, even by those who are ] 
its warmest advocates) : there is an air of ruin and decay j 
abroad, which is inseparable from the system. The barns and 
outhouses are mouldering away ; the sheds are patched and 
half roofless; the log cabins (built in Virginia with external 
chimneys made of clay or wood), are squalid in the last degree. 
There is no look of decent comfort anywhere. The miserable 
stations by the railway side ; the great wild woodyards, whence 
the engine is supplied with fuel ; the negro children rolling on 
the ground before the cabin doors, with dogs and pigs j the 
biped beasts of burden slinking past : gloom and dejection arc 
upon them all. 



JGS 



RICHMOND. 



In the negro car belonging to the train in which we made 
this journey, were a mother and her children who had just been 
purchased ; the husband and father being left behind with their 
old owner. The children cried the whole way, and the mother 
was misery's picture. The champion of Life, Liberty, and the 
Pursuit of Happiness, who had bought them, rode in the same 
train ; and, every time we stopped, got down to see that they 
were safe. The black in Sinbad's Travels with one eye in the 
middle of his forehead which shone like a burning coal, was na- 
ture's aristocrat compared with this while gentleman. 

It was between six and seven o'clock in the evening, when 
we drove to the hole! : in front of which, and on the top of the 
broad flight of steps leading to the door, two or three citizens 
were balancing themselves on rocking-chairs, and smoking 
cigars. We found it a very large and elegant establishment, and 
were as well entertained as travellers need desire to be. The 
climate being a thirsty one, there was never, at any hour of the 
day, a scarcity of loungers in the spacious bar, or a cessation of 
the mixing of cool liquors : but they were a merrier people 
here, and had musical instruments playing to them o' nights, 
which it was a treat to hear again. 

The next day, and the next , we rode and walked about the 
town, which is delightfully situated on eight hills, overhanging 
James River ; a sparkling stream, studded here and there with 
bright islands, or brawling over broken rocks. Although it 
was yet but the middle of March, the weather in this southern 
temperature was extremely warm ; the peach trees and mag- 
nolias were in full bloom ; and the trees were green. In alow' 
ground among the hills, is a valley known as "Bloody Run, 5 
from a terrible conflict with the Indians which once occurred 
there. It is a good place for such a struggle, and, like every 
other spot I saw, associated with any legend of that wild people 
now so rapidly fading from the earth, interested me very 
much. 

The city is seat of the local parliament of Virginia ; and in 
its shady legislative halls, some orators were drowsily holding 
forth to the hot noon day. By dint of constant repetition, 



RICHMOND. 



169 



however, these constitutional sights had very little more inte- 
rest for me than so many parochial vestries ; and I was glad to 
exchange this one for a lounge in a well-arranged public 
library of some ten thousand volumes, and a visit to a tobacco 
manufactory, where the workmen were all slaves. 

I saw in this place the whole process of picking, rolling, 
prcssiog, drying, packing in casks, and branding. All the 
tobacco thus dealt with, was in course of manufacture for 
chewing ; and one would have supposed there was enough in 
that one storehouse to have GHcd even the comprehensive 
jaws of America. In this form, the weed looks like the oilcake 
on which we fatten cattle; and even without reference to its 
consequences, is sufficiently uninviting. 

Many of the workmen appeared to be strong men, and it is 
hardly necessary to add that they were all labouring quietly, 
then. After two o'clock in the day, they are allowed to sing, 
a certain number at a lime. The hour striking while I was 
there, some twenty sang a hymn in parts, and sang it by no 
means ill ; pursuing their work meanwhile. A bell rang as I 
was about to leave, and they all poured forth into a building 
on the opposite side of the street to dinner. I said several times 
that I should like to see them at their meal ; but as the 
gentleman to whom I mentioned this desire appeared to be 
suddenly taken rather deaf, I did not pursue the request. Of 
their appearance 1 shall have somethingto say, presently. 

On the following day, I visited a plantation or farm, of about 
twelve hundred acres, on the opposite bank of the river. Here 
again , although I went down with theownerof the estate, to 
" the quarter," as that part of it in which the slaves live is 
railed, I was not invited to enter into any of their huts. All I 
saw of them, was, that they w ere very crazy, wretched cabins, 
near to which groups of half-naked children basked in the 
sun, or wallowed on the dusty ground. Cut I believe that 
this gentleman is a considerate and excellent master, 
who inherited his fifty slaves, and is neither a buyer nor a 
seller of human stock ; and I am sure, from my own observa- 
tion and conviction, that he is a kind-hearted, worthy man. ( 



170 



RICHMOND. 



The planter's house was' an airy rustic dwelling, that 
brought Defoe's description of such places strongly to my recol- 
lection. The day was very warm, but the blinds being all 
closed, and the windows and doors set wide open, a shady 
coolness rustled through the rooms, which was exquisitley 
refreshing after the glare and heat without. Before the 
windows was an open piazza, where, in what they call the hot 
weather — whatever that may be — they sling hammocks, and 
drink and doze luxuriously. I do not know how their cool 
refections may taste within the hammocks, but, having expe- 
rience, I can report that, out of them, the mounds of ices and 
the bowls of mint-julep and sherry cobbler they make in these 
latitudes, are refreshments never to be thought of afterwards, 
in summer, by those who would preserve contented minds. 

There are two bridges across the river : one belongs to the 
railroad, and the other, which is a very crazy affair, is the 
private property of some old lady in the neighbourhood, who 
levies tolls upon the town's people. Grossing this bridge, on 
my way back, I saw a notice painted on the gate, cautioning 
ail persons to drive slowly : under a penalty, if the offender 
were a white man, of five dollars ; if a negro, fifteen stripes. 

The same decay and gloom that overhang the way by which 
it is approached, hover above the town of Richmond. There 
are pretty villas and cheerful houses in its streets, and Nature 
smiles upon the country round; but jostling its handsome 
residences, like slavery itself going hand in hand with many 
lofty virtues, are deplorable tenements, fences unrepaired, 
walls crumbling into ruinous heaps. Hinting gloomily at 
things below the surface, these, and many other tokens of the 
same description, force themselves upon the notice, and are 
remembered with depressing influence, when livelier features 
are forgotten. 

To those who are happily unaccustomed to them, the coun- 
tenances in the streets and labouring places, too, are shocking. 
All men who know that there are laws against instructing 
slaves, of which the pains and penalties greatly exceed in 
their amount the Cn s imposed on those whociaim and torture 



BALTIMORE. 



171 



them, must be prepared to find their faces very low in the 
scale of intellectual expression . But the darkness — not of skin, 
but mind — which meets the stranger's eye at every turn ; the 
brutalizing and blotting out of all the fairer characters traced 
by Nature's hand ; immeasurably outdo his worst belief. That 
travelled creation of the great satirist's brain, who fresh from 
living among horses, peered from a high casement down upon 
his own kind with trembling horror, was scarcely more repelled 
and daunted by the sight, than those who look upon some of 
these faces for the first time must surely be. 

I left the last of them behind me in the person of a wretched 
drudge, who, after running to and fro all day till midnight, 
and moping in his stealthy winks of sleep upon the stairs 
between whiles, was washing the dark passages at four o'clock 
in the morning ; and went upon my way with a grateful heart 
that I was not doomed to live where slavery was, and had 
never had my senses blunted to its wrongs and horrors in a 
slave-rocked cradle. 

It had been my intention to proceed by James River and 
Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore; but one of the steam-boats being 
absent from her station through some accident, and the means 
of conveyance being consequently rendered uncertain, we 
returned to Washington by the way we had come (there were 
two constables on board the steam-boat, in pursuit of runaway 
slaves}, and halting there again for one night, went on to 
Baltimore next afternoon. 

The most comfortable of all the hotels of which I had] any 
experience in the United States, and they were not a few, is 
Barnum's in that city : where the English traveller will find 
curtains to his bed, for the first and probably the last time, is 
America ; and where he will be likely to have cncuglvwater for 
washing himself, which is not at all a common case. 

This capital of the state of Maryland is a bustling busy town, 
with a great deal of traffic of various kinds, and in particular 
of water commerce. That portion of the town which it most 
favours is none of the cleanest, it is (rue; but the upper part is 
of a very different character, and has many agreeable streets 



3 72 



BALTIMORE. 



and public buildings. The Washington Monument, which is a 
handsome pillar with a statue on its summit ; the Medical Col- 
lege ; and the Battle Monument in memory of an engagement 
with the British at North Point j are the most conspicuous 
among them. 

There is a very good prison in this city, and the state Peni- 
tentiary is also among its institutions. In this latter establish- 
ment there were two curious cases. 

One, was that of a young man, who had been tried for the 
murder of his father. The evidence was entirely circumstantial, 
and was very conflicting and doubtful ; nor was it possible to 
assign any motive which could have tempted him to the com- 
mission of so tremendous a crime. He had been tried twice ; 
and on the second occasion the jury felt so much hesitation in 
convicting him, that they found a verdict of manslaughter, or 
murder in the second degree ; which it could not possibly be, as 
there had, beyond all doubt, been no quarrel or provocation, 
and if he were guilty at all, he was unquestionably guilty of 
murder in its broadest and worst signification. 

The remarkable feature in the case was, that if the unfor- 
tunate deceased were not really murdered by this own son of 
his, he must have been murdered by his own brother. The 
evidence lay, in a most remarkable manner, between those 
two. Oii all the suspicious points, the dead man's brother was 
the witness ; all the explanations for the prisoner, (some of them 
extremely plausible) went, by construction and inference, to 
inculpate him as plotting to fix the guilt upon his nephew. It 
must have been one of them : and the jury had to decide between 
two sets of suspicions, almost equally unnatural, unaccountable, 
and strange. 

The other case, w as that of a man who once went to a certain 
distiller's and stole a copper measure containing a quantity of 
liquor. He was pursued and taken with the property in his 
possession, and was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. On 
coming out of the jail, at the expiration of that term, he went 
back to the same distiller's, and stole the same copper measure 
containing the same quantity of liquor. There was not the 



THE HARRISBURGH MAIL. 



slightest reason to suppose lhat the man wished to return to 
prison : indeed everything, but the commission of the offence, 
made directly against that assumption. There are only two 
ways of accounting for this extraordinary proceeding. One is, 
that after undergoing so much for this copper measure he con- 
ceived he had established a sort of claim and right to it. The 
other that, by dint of long thinking about, it had become a mo- 
nomania with him, and had acquired a fascination which he 
found it impossible to resist ■ swelling from an Earthly Copper 
Gallon into an Ethereal Golden Vat. 

After remaining here a couple of days I bound myself to a 
rigid adherence to the plan I had laid down so recently, and 
resolved to set forward on our western journey without any 
more delay. Accordingly, having reduced the luggage within 
the smallest possible compass 'by sending back to New York, 
to be afterwards forwarded to us in Canada, so much of it as 
was not absolutely wanted) ; and having procured the necessary 
credentials to banking-houses on the way; and having more- 
over looked for two evenings at the setting sun, with as wel!- 
defined an idea of the country before us as if we had been going- 
to travel into the very centre of that planet : we left Baltimore 
by another railway at half past eight in the morning, and 
reached the town of York, some sixty miles off, by the early 
dinner-time of the Hotel which was the starting-place of 
the four-horse coach, wherein we were to proceed to Harris- 
burgh. 

This conveyance, the box of which I was fortunate enough to 
secure, had com- down to meet us at the railroad station, and 
was as muddy and cumbersome as usual. As more pas c engcrs 
were waiting for uc at the inn-door, the coachman observed 
under his breath, in the usual self- communicative voice, look- 
ing the while at his mouldy harness as it it were to that he was 
addressing himself : 

•' I expect we shall want the big coach." 

I could not help wondering within myself what the size of 
this big coach might be, and how many persons it might be 
designed to hold 5 for the vehicle which was too small for our 



174 



THE HARRISBURGH MAIL. 



purpose was something larger than two English heavy night 
coaches. My speculations were speedily set at rest, however, 
for as soon as we had dined, there came rumbling up the street, 
shaking its sides like a corpulent giant, a kind of barge on 
wheels. After much blundering and backing, it stopped at the 
door : rolling heavily from side to side when its other motion 
had ceased, as if it had taken cold in its damp stable, and be- 
tween that, and the having been required in its dropsical old 
age to move at any faster pace than a walk, were distressed by 
shortness of wind. 

u If here ain't the Harrisburgh mail at last, and dreadful 
bright and smart to look at too," cried an elderly gentleman 
in some excitement, u darn my mother!" 

I don't know what the sensation of being darned may be, or 
whether a man's mother has a keener relish or disrelish of the 
process than anybody else ; but if the endurance of this mys- 
terious ceremony by the old lady in question had depended on 
the accuracy of her son's vision in respect to the abstract bright- 
ness and smartness of the Harrisburgh mail, she would cer- 
tainly have undergone its infliction. However, they packed 
twelve people inside ; and the luggage (including such trifles as 
a large rocking-chair, and a good-sized dining-tabie) being at 
length made fast upon the roof, we started oil* in great state. 

At the door of another hotel, there was another passenger 
to be taken up. 

*' Any room, sir ?" cries the new passenger to the coach- 
man. 

Well there's room enough," replies the coachman, without 
getting down or even looking at him. 

" There an't no room at ail, sir," bawls a gentleman inside. 
Which another gentleman (also inside) confirms, by predicting 
that the attempt to introduce any more passengers " wont fit 
nohow." 

The new passenger, without any expression of anxiety, looks 
into the coach, and then looks up at the coachman \ " JVow, 
how do yon mean to fix it?" says he, after a pause: M for I 
must go." 



THE HARRISBURGH MAIL. 



175 



The coachman employs himself in twisting the lash of his 
whip into a knot, and takes no more notice of the question : 
clearly signifying that it is anybody's business but his, and that 
the passengers would do well to fix it, among themselves. In 
this state of things, matters seem to be approximating to a fix 
of another kind, when another inside passenger in a corner, 
who is nearly suffocated, cries faintly, 

" 1*11 get out." 

This is no matter of relief or self-congratulation to the driver, 
for his immoveable philosophy is perfectly undisturbed by any- 
thing that happens in the coach. Of ail things in the world, 
the coach would seem to be the very last upon his mind. The 
exchange is made, however, aud then the passenger who has 
given up his seat makes a third upon the box, seating himself 
in what he calls the middle : that is, with half his person on my 
legs, and the other half on the driver's. 

" Go ahead cap en," cries the colonel, who directs. 

u G6 lung !" cries the cap' en to his company, the horses, and 
away we go. 

"\\e took up at a rural bar-room, after we had gone a few 
miles, an intoxicated gentleman, who climbed upon the roof 
among the luggage, and subsequently slipping off without 
hurting himself, was seen in the distant perspective reeling 
back to the grog shop where we had found him. We also parted 
with more of our freight at different limes, so that when we 
came to change horses, I was again alone outside. 

The coachmen always change with the horses, and arc usually 
as dirty as the coach. The first was dressed like a very shabby 
English baker ; the second like a Russian peasant : for he wore 
a loose purpie camlet robe with a fur collar, lied round his 
waist with a parti- coloured worsted sash; grey trousers ; light 
blue gloves ; and a cap of bear-kin. It had by this time come on 
to rain very heavily, and there was a cold damp mist besides, 
which penetrated to the skin. 1 was very glad to take advantage 
of a stoppage and get down to stretch my legs, shake the water 
off my great-coat, and swallow the usual anti-temperance recipe 
for keeping out the cold. 



176 



THE HARRISBURGH MAIL. 



When I mounted to my scat again, I observed a new'parcci 
lying on the coach roof, which I took to be a rath crlarge fiddle 
in a brown bag. In the course of a few miles, however, I 
discovered that it had a glazed cap at one end and a pair of 
muddy shoes at the other ; and further observation demon- 
strated it to be a small boy in a snuff-coloured coat, with his 
arms quite pinioned to his sides by deep forcing into his pockets. 
He was, I presume, a relative or friend of the coachman's, as 
he lay a-top of the luggage with his face towards the rain ; and 
except when a change of position brought his shoes in contact 
with my hat, he appeared to be asleep. At last, on some occa- 
sion of our stopping, this thing slowly uprcared itself to the 
height of three feet six, and fixing its eyes on me, observed in 
piping accents, with a complacent yawn half quenched in an 
obliging air of friendly patronage, 4 'Well now, stranger, I 
guess you find this a'most like an English arternoon, hey?" 

The scenery, which had been tame enough at first, was, for 
the last ten or twelve miles, beautiful. Our road wound 
through the pleasant valley of the Susquehanna ; the river, 
dotted with innumerable green islands, lay upon our right ; 
and on the left, -a steep ascent, craggy with broken rock, and 
dark with pine trees. The mist, wreathing ilself into a hundred 
fantastic shapes, moved solemnly upon the water 5 and the 
gloom of evening gave to all an air of mystery and silence which 
greatly enhanced its natural interest. 

We crossed this river by a wooden bridge, roofed and covered 
in on all sides, and nearly a mile in length. It was profoundly 
dark : perplexed, with great beams, crossing and recrossing it 
at every possible angle; and through the broad chinks and cre- 
vices in the floor, the rapid river gleamed, far down below, 
like a legion of eyes. We had no lamps; and as the horses 
stumbled and floundered through this place, towards the distant 
speck of dying light, it seemed interminable. I really could 
not at first persuade myself as we rumbled heavily on, filling 
the bridge with hollow noises, and I held down my head to save 
it from the rafters above, but that I was in a painful dream ; 
for I have often dreamed of toiling through such places, and 



THE HAJIRISBLIIGH .MAIL. 



177 



as often argued, even at the time, " this cannot be reality." 

At length, however, we emerged upon the streets of Harris- 
burgh, whose feeble lights, reflected dismally from the wet 
ground, did not shine out upon a very cheerful city. We were 
soon established in a snug hotel, which, though smaller and 
far less splendid than many we put up at, is raised above them 
all in my remembrance, by having for its landlord the most 
obliging, considerate, and gentlemanly person I ever had to 
deal with. 

As we were not to proceed upon our journey until the 
afternoon, I walked out, after breakfast the next morning, to 
look about me : and was duly shown a model prison on the so- 
litary system, just erected, and as yet without an inmate ; the 
trunk of an old tree to which Harris, the first settler here 
(afterwards buried under it) was tied by hostile Indians, with 
his funeral pile about him, when he was saved by the timely 
appearance of a friendly party on the opposite shore of the 
river ; the local legislature (for there was another of those bo- 
dies here, again, in full debate) ; and the other curiosities of 
the town. 

I was very much interested in looking over a number of 
treaties made from time to time with the poor Indians, signed by 
the different chiefs at the period of their ratification, and preser- 
ved in the office of the Secretary to the Commonwealth. These 
signatures, traced of course by their own hands, are rough 
drawings of the creatures or weapons they were called after. 
Thus, the Great Turtle makes a crooked pen-and-ink outline 
of agreat turtle; the Buffalo sketches a Buffalo; the WarHachctsets 
a rough image of that weapon for his mark. So with the Arrow, 
the Fish, the Scalp, the Big Canoe, and all of them. 

I could not but think— as I looked at these feeble and tre- 
mulous productions of hands which could draw the longest ar- 
row to the head in a stout elkhorn bow, or split a bead or 
feather with a rifle-ball— of Crabbe's musings over the Parish 
Register, and the irregular scratches made with a pen, by men 
who would plough a lengthy furrow straight from end to end. 
Nor could I help bestowing many sorrowful thoughts upon the 

12 



178 



A GLIMPSE OF HARRISBURG. 



simple warriors whose bands and hearts were set there, in all 
truth and honesty ; and who only learned in course of time from 
white men how to break their faith, and quibble out of forms 
and bonds. I wondered, too, how many times the credulous 
Big Turtle, or trusting Little Hatchet, had put his mark to trea- 
ties which were falsely read to him ; and had signed away, he 
knew not what, until it went and cast him loose upon the new 
possessors of the land, a savage indeed. 

Our host announced, before our early dinner, that some 
members of the legislative body proposed to do us the honour 
of calling. He had kindly yielded up to us his wife's own little 
parlour, and when I begged that he would show them in, I saw 
him look with painful apprehension at its pretty carpet ; though, 
being otherwise occupied at the time, the cause of his uneasi- 
ness did not occur to me. 

It certainly would have been more pleasant to all parties 
concerned, and would not, I think, have compromised their in- 
dependence in any material degree, if some of these gentlemen 
had not only yielded to the prejudice in favour of spittoons, 
but had abandoned themselves, for the moment, even to the 
conventional absurdity of pocket-handkerchiefs. 

It still continued to rain heavily, and when we went down 
to the Canal-Boat (for that was the mode of conveyance by 
which we were to proceed) after dinner, the weather was as 
unpromising and obstinately wet as one would desire to see. 
Aor was the sight of this canal-boat, in which we were to spend 
three or four days, by any means a cheerful one; as it involved 
some uneasy speculations concerning the disposal of the passen- 
gers at night, and opened a wide field of inquiry touching the 
other domestic arrangements of the establishment, which was 
sufficiently disconcerting. 

However, there it was was — a barge with a little house in it, 
viewed from the outside ; and a caravan at a fair, viewed from 
within : the gentlemen being accommodated, as the spectators 
usually are, in one of those locomotive museums of penny won- 
ders j and the ladies being partitioned off by a red curtain, after 
the manner of the dwarfs and giants in the same establishments, 



CANAL-BOAT. 



170 



whose private lives are passed in rather close exclusiveness. 

We sat here, looking silently at the row of little tables, which 
extended down both sides of the cabin, and listening to the rain 
as it dripped and pattered on the boat, and plashed with a dis- 
mal merriment in the water, until the arrival of the railway 
train, for whose final contribution to our stock of passengers, 
our departure was alone deferred It brought a great many 
boxes, which were bumped and tossed upon the roof, almost 
as painfully as if they had been deposited on one's own head, 
without the intervention of a porter s knot ; and several damp 
gentlemen, whose clothes, on their drawing round the stove, 
began to steam again. No doubt it would have been a thought 
more comfortable if the driving rain, which now poured down 
more soakingly than ever, had admitted of a window being 
opened, or if our number had been something less than thirty; 
but there was scarcely time to think as much, when a train of 
three horses was attached to the tow-rope, the boy upon the 
leader smacked his whip, the rudder creaked and groaned com- 
plainingly, and we had begun our journey. 



TO PITTSBURG. 



u 



CHAPTER THE TENTH. 



SOME FURTHER ACCOUNT OP THE CANAL-ROAT, ITS DOMESTIC ECONOMY, 
AND ITS PASSENGERS. JOURNEY TO PITTSRURG ACROSS THE ALLE- 
GHANY MOUNTAINS. PITTSRURG* 

As it continued to rain most perseveringly, we all remained 
below : the damp gentlemen round the stove, gradually becom- 
ing mildewed by the action of the fire ; and the dry gentlemen 
lying at full length upon the seats, or slumbering uneasily with 
their faces on the tables, or walking up and down the cabin, 
which it was barely possible for a man of the middle height to 
do, without making bald places on his head by scraping it 
against the roof. At about six o'clock, all the small tables 
were put together to form one long table, and everybody sat 
down to tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, 
potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, black puddings, and sausages. 

"Will yuu try," said my opposite neighbour, handing me a 
dish of potatoes, broken up in milk and butter, u will you try 
some of these fixings ? " 

There are few words which perform such various duties as 
this word u fix." It is the Caleb Quotemof the American voca- 
bulary. You call upon a gentleman in a country town, and 
his help informs you that he is " fixing himself' 5 just now, but 
will be down directly : by which you are to understand that he 
is dressing. You inquire, on board a steamboat, of a fellow 
passenger, whether breakfast will be ready soon, and he tells 
you he should think so, for when he w as last below, they w ere 
" fixing the tables : " in other words, laying the cloth. You beg 



184 



SOME FURTHER ACCOUNT OF 



a porter to collect your luggage, and he entreats you not to be 
uneasy, for he'll " fix it presently : " and if you complain of 
indisposition, you are advised to have recourse to Doctor so 
and so, who will a fix you ; ' in no time. 

One night, I ordered a bottle of mulled wine at an hotel 
where I was staying, and waited a long time for it ; at length it 
was put upon the table with an apology from the landlord that 
he feared it wasn't " fixed properly." And I recollect once, 
at a stage-coach dinner, overhearing a very stern gentleman 
demand of a waiter who presented him with a plate of under- 
done roast beef, " whether he called that, fixing God 
A'mighty's vittles ? " 

There is no doubt that the meal, at which the invitation was 
tendered to me which has occasioned this digression, was dis- 
posed of somewhat ravenously ; and that the gentlemen thrust 
the broad-bladed knives and the two-pronged forks further 
down their throats than I ever saw the same weapons go before, 
except in the hands of a skilful juggler : but no man sat down 
until the ladies were seated ; or omitted any little act of polite- 
ness which could contribute to their comfort. Nor did I ever 
once, on any occasion, anywhere, during my rambles in Ame- 
rica, see a woman exposed to the slightest act of rudeness, 
incivility, or even inattention. 

By the time the meal was over, the rain, which seemed to 
have worn itself out by coming down so fast, was nearly over 
too ; and it became feasible to go on deck : which was a great 
relief, notwithstanding its being a very small deck, and being 
rendered still smaller by the luggage which was heaped together 
in the middle under a tarpaulin covering ; leaving, on either 
side, a path so narrow, that it became a science to walk to and fro 
without tumbling overboard into the canal. It was somewhat 
embarrassing at first, too, to have to duck nimbly every five 
minutes whenever the man at the helm cried " Bridge ! "and 
sometimes, when the cry was " Low Bridge," to lie down 
nearly flat. But custom familiarizes one to anything, and there 
were so many bridges that it took a very short time to get used 
to this. 



THE CANAL-BOAT. 



185 



As night came on. and we drew in sight of the first range of 
hills, which are the outposts of the Alleghany mountains, the 
scenery, which had been uninteresting hitherto, became more 
bold and striking. The wet ground reeked and smoked, after 
the heavy fall of rain ; and the croaking of the frogs (whose 
noise in these parts is almost incredible) sounded as though a 
million of fairy teams with bells, were travelling through the 
air, and keeping pace with us. The night was cloudy yet, but 
moonlight too : and when we crossed the Susquehanna river — 
over which there is an extraordinary wooden bridge with two 
galleries, one above the other, so that even there, two boat 
teams meeting, may pass without confusion — it was wild and 
grand. 

I have mentioned my having been in some uncertainty and 
doubt, at first, relative to the sleeping arrangements on board 
this boat. I remained in the same vague state of mind until ten 
o'clock or thereabouts, when going below, I found suspended 
on either side of the cabin, three long tiers of hanging book- 
shelves, designed apparently for volumes of the small octavo 
size. Looking with greater attention at these contrivances 
(wondering to find such literary preparations in such a place), 
I descried on each shelf a sort of microscopic sheet and blanket ; 
then I began dimly to comprehend that the passengers were 
the library, and that they were to be arranged, edge-wise, on 
these shelves, till morning. 

I was assisted to this conclusion by seeing some of them 
gathered round the master of the boat, at one of the tables, 
drawing lots with all the anxieties and passions of gamesters 
depicted in their countenances ; while others, with small pieces 
of cardboard in their hands, were groping among the shelves in 
search of numbers corresponding with those they had drawn. As 
soon as any gentleman found his number, he took possession of 
it by immediately undressing himself and crawling into bed. 
The rapidity with which an agitated gambler subsided into a 
snoring slumberer, was one of the most singular effects I have 
ever witnessed. As to the ladies, they were already a-bed, be- 
hind the red curtain, which was carefully drawn and pinned up 



JSC 



DOMESTIC ECONOMY OF 



in the centre ; though as every cough, or sneeze, or whisper, be- 
hind this curtain, was perfectly audible before it, we had still a 
lively consciousness of their society. 

The politeness of the person in authority had secured to me a 
shelf in a nook near this red curtain, in some degree removed 
from the great body of sleepers : to which place I retired, with 
many acknowledgments to him for his attention . I found it, on 
after-measurement, just the width of an ordinary sheet of Bath 
post letter-paper ; and I was at first in some uncertainty as to 
the best means of getting into it. But the shelf being a bottom 
one, I finally determined on lying upon the floor, rolling gently 
in, stopping immediately I touched the mattress, and remain- 
ing for the night with that side uppermost, whatever it might 
be. Luckily, I came upon my back at exactly the right mo- 
ment. I was much alarmed on looking upward, to see, by the 
shape of his half yard of sacking (which his weight had bent 
into an exceedingly tight bag), that there was a very heavy 
gentleman above me, whom the slender cords seemed quite in- 
capable of holding ; and I could not help reflecting upon the 
grief of my wife and family in the event of his coming down in 
the night. But as I could not have got up again without a se- 
vere bodily struggle, which might have alarmed the ladies ; and 
as I had nowhere to go to, even if I had j I shut my eyes upon 
the danger, and remained there. 

One of two remarkable circumstances is indisputably a fact, 
with reference to that class of society who travel in these boats. 
Either they carry their restlessness to such a pitch that they never 
sleep at all j or they expectorate in dreams, which would be a 
remarkable mingling of the real and ideal. All night long, and 
every night, on this canal, there was a perfect storm and tem- 
pest of spitting; and once my coat, being in the very centre of 
a hurricane sustained by five gentlemen (which moved verti- 
cally, strictly carrying out R.eid's Theory of the Law of Storms), 
I was fain the next morning to lay it on the deck, and rub 
it down with fair water before it was in a condition to be worn 
again. 

Between five and six o'clock in the morning we got up, and 



THE CANAL-BOAT. 



187 



some of us went on deck, to give them an opportunity of tak- 
ing the shelves down 5 while others, the morning being very 
cold, crowded round the rusty stove, cherishing the newly- 
kindled fire, and filling the grate with those voluntary contri- 
butions of which they had been so liberal all night. The wash- 
ing accommodations were primitive. There was a tin ladle 
chained to the deck, with which every gentleman who thought 
it necessary to cleanse himself (some were superior to this 
weakness), fished the dirty water out of the canal, and pored 
it into a tin basin, secured in like manner. There was also 
a jack-towel. And , hanging up before a little looking-glass in 
the bar, in the immediate vicinity of the bread and cheese and 
biscuits, were a public comb and hair-brush. 

At eight o'clock, the shelves being taken down and put away 
and the tables joined together, everybody sat down to the tea, 
coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, 
pickles, ham, chops, black puddings, and sausages, all over 
again. Some were fond of compounding this variety, and hav- 
ing it all on their plates at once. As each gentleman got through 
his own personal amount of tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, 
shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, black puddings, 
and sausages, he rose up and walked off. When everybody had 
done with everything, the fragments were cleared away i and 
one of the waiters appearing anew in the character of a barber, 
shaved such of the company as desired to be shaved • while the 
remainder looked on, or yawned over their newspapers. Din- 
ner was breakfast again, w ithout the tea and coffee ; and supper 
and breakfast were identical. 

There was a man on board this boat, with a light fresh- 
coloured face, and a pepper-and-salt suit of clothes, who was 
the most inquisitive fellow that can possibly be imagined. He 
never spoke otherwise than interrogatively. He was an em- 
bodied inquiry. Sitting down or standing up, still or moving, 
walking the deck or taking his meals, there he was, with a 
great note of interrogation in each eye, two in his cocked ears, 
two more in his turned-up nose and chin, at least half a dozen 
more about the corners of his mouth, and the largest one of all 



188 



PASSENGERS OF 



in his hair, which was brushed pertly off his forehead in a flaxen 
clump. Every button in his clothes said, u Eh? What's that? 
Did you speak? Say that again, will you?" He was always 
wide awake, like the enchanted bride who drove her husband 
frantic; always restless: always thirsting for answers ; perpe- 
tually seeking and never finding. There never was such a 
curious man. 

I wore a fur great-coat at that time, and before we were well 
clear of the wharf, he questioned me concerning it, and its price, 
and where I bought it, and when, and what fur it was, and 
what it weighed, and what it cost. Then he took notice of my 
watch, and asked what that cost, and whether it was a French 
watch, and where I got it, and how I got it, and whether I 
bought it or had it given me, and how it went, and where the 
keyhole was, and when I wound it, every night or every morn- 
ing, and whether I ever forgot to wind it at all, and if I did, 
what then? Where had I been to last, and where was I going 
next, and where was I going after that, and had I seen the 
President, and what did he say, and what did I say, and what 
did he say when I had said that ? Eh ? Lor now ! do tell ! 

Finding that nothing would satisfy him, I evaded his ques- 
tions after the first score or two, and in particular pleaded 
ignorance respecting the name of the fur whereof the coat was 
made. I am unable to say whether this was the reason, but 
that coat fascinated him ever afterwards ; he usually kept close 
behind me as I walked, and moved as I moved, that he might 
look at it the better ; and he frequently dived into narrow places 
after me at the risk of his life, that he might have the satisfac- 
tion of passing his hand up the back, and rubbing it the wrong 
way. 

We had another odd specimen on board, of a different kind. 
This was a thin-faced, spare-figured man of middle age and 
stature, dressed in a dusty drabbish-coloured suit, such as I 
never saw before. He was perfectly quiet during the first part 
of the journey ; indeed I don't remember having so much as 
seen him until he was brought out by circumstances, as great 



THE CANAL-BOAT. 



189 



men often are. The conjunction of events which made him 
famous, happened, briefly, thus. 

The canal extends to the foot of the mountain, and there, of 
course, it stops ; the passengers being conveyed across it by land 
carriage, and taken on afterwards by another canal-boat, the 
counterpart of the first, which awaits them on the other side. 
There are two canal lines of passage-boat ; one is called The Ex- 
presss, and one (a cheaper one) The Pioneer. The Pioneer gets 
first to the mountain, and waits for The Express people to come 
up ; both sets of passengers being conveyed across it at the same 
time. We were the Express company; but when we had 
crossed the mountain, and had come to the second boat, the 
proprietors took it into their heads to draft all the Pioneers 
into it likew ise, so that we were five-and-forty at least, and 
the accession of passengers was not at all of that kind which 
improved the prospect of sleeping at night. Our people grum- 
bled at this, as people do in such cases ; but suffered the boat to 
be towed off with the whole freight aboard nevertheless; and 
away we went down the canal. At home, I should have pro- 
tested lustily, but being a foreigner here, I held my peace. 
Not so this passenger. He cleft a path among the people on 
deck (w e were nearly all on deck), and without adressing any- 
body whomsoever, soliloquised as follows : 

"This may suit you, this may, but it don't suit me. This 
may be all very well with Down Easters and men of Boston 
raising, but it won't suit my figure no how ; and no two ways 
about that; and so I tell you. Now! I'm from the brown 
forests of the Mississippi, / am, and w hen the sun shines on me, 
it does shine— a little. It don't glimmer where /live, the sun 
don t. No. I'm a brown forester, I am. I an't a Johnny 
Cake. There are no smooth skins where I live. We're rough 
men there. Rather. If Down Easters and men of Boston rais- 
ing like this, I'm glad of it, but I'm none of lhat raising nor of 
that breed. No. This company wants a little fixing, it does. 
I'm the wrong sort of man for 'em, / am. They won't like 
me, they won't. This is piling of it up, a little too mountai- 
nous, this is." At the end of every one of these short sen- 



100 



JOURNEY TO PITTSBURG. 



lences lie turned upon bis heel, and walked the other way ; 
checking himself abruptly when he had finished another short 
sentence, and turning back again. 

It is impossible for me to say what terrific meaning was hidden 
in the words of this brown forester, but I know that the other 
passengers looked on in a sort of admiring horror, and that 
presently the boat was put back to the wharf, and as many of 
the Pioneers as could be coaxed or bullied into going away, 
were got rid of. 

When we started again, some of the boldest spirits on board, 
made bold to say to the obvious occasion of this improvement 
in our prospects, " Much obliged to you, sir : " whereunto the 
brown forester (waving his hand, and still walking up and down 
as before), replied, "No you an't. You're none o' my raising. 
You may act for yourselves, you may. I have pintcd out the 
way. Down Easters and Johnny Cakes can follow if they please. 
I an t a Johnny Cake, / an't. I am from the brown forests of 
the Mississippi, / am" — and so on, as before. He was unani- 
mously voted one of the tables for his bed at night — there is a 
great contest for the tables — in consideration of his public ser- 
vices : and he had the warmest corner by the stove throughout 
the rest of the journey . But I never could find out that he did 
anything except sit there ; nor did I hear him speak again until, 
in the midst of the bustle and turmoil of getting the luggage 
ashore in the dark at Pittsburg, I stumbled over him as he sat 
smoking a cigar on the cabin steps, and heard him muttering 
to himself, with a short laugh of defiance, " I an't a Johnny Cake, 
/an't. I'am from the brown forests of the Mississippi, / am 
damme!" I am inclined te argue from this, that he had never left ofi 
se ing so ; but J could not make affidavit of that part of the 
story, if required to do so by my Queen and Country. 

As we have not reached Pittsburg yet however, in the or der 
of our narrative, I may go on to remark that breakfast was per- 
haps the least desirable meal of the day, as in addition to the 
many savoury odours arising from the eatables already men- 
tioned, there were whiffs of gin, whiskey, brandy and rum, 
from the little bar hard by, and a decided seasoning of stale 



ACROSS THE ALLEGHANIES. 



191 



tobacco. Many of the gentlemen passengers were far from par- 
ticular in respect of their linen, which was in some cases as 
yellow as the little rivulets that had trickled from the corners 
of their mouths in chewing, and dried there. jNor was the at- 
mosphere quite free from zephyr whisperings of the thirty beds 
which had just been cleared away, and of which we were 
further and more pressingly reminded by the occasional appear- 
ance on the table-cloth of a kind of Game, not mentioned in the 
Bill of Fare. 

And yet despite these oddities — and even they had, for me 
at least, a humour of their own — there was much in this Diode 
of travelling which I heartily enjoyed at the time, and look 
back upon with great pleasure. Even the running up, bare- 
necked, at Gve o'clock in the morning, from the tainted cabin to 
the dirty deck; scooping up the icy water, plunging one s head 
into it, and drawing it out, all fresh and glowing with the cold ; 
was a good thing. The fast, brisk walk upon the towing-path, 
between that time and breakfast, when every vein and artery 
seemed to tingle with health ; the exquisite beauty of the open- 
ing day, when light came gleaming off from every thing; the 
lazy motion of the boat, when one lay idly on the deck, looking 
through, rather than at, the deep blue sky ; the gliding on, at 
night, so noiselessly, past frowning hills, sullen with dark trees, 
and sometimes angry in one red burning spot high up, where 
unseen men lay crouching round a Ore ; the shining out of the 
bright stars, undisturbed by noise of wheels or steam, or any 
other sound than the liquid rippling of the water as the boat 
went on : all these were pure delights. 

Then, there were new settlements and detached log-cabins 
and frame-houses, full of interest for strangers from an old 
country : cabins with simple ovens, outside, made of clay; and 
lodgings for the pigs, nearly as good as many of the human 
quarters; broken windows, patched with w r orn-out hats, old 
clothes, old boards, fragments of blankets and paper ; and home- 
made dressers standing in the open air without the door, where- 
on was ranged the household store, not hard to count, of earthen 
jars and pots. The eye was pained to see the stumps of great 



192 



JOURNEY TO PITTSBURG. 



trees thickly strewn in every field of wheat, and seldom to lose 
the eternal swamp and dull morass, with hundreds of rotten 
trunks and twisted branches steeped in its unwholesome water. 
It was quite sad and oppressive, to come upon great tracts 
wliere settlers had been burning down the trees, and where 
their wounded bodies lay about, like those of murdered crea- 
tures, while here and there some charred and blackened giant 
reared aloft two withered arms, and seemed to call down curses 
on his foes. Sometimes, at night, the way wound through some 
lonely gorge, like a mountain pass in Scotland, shining and 
coldly glittering in the light of the moon, and so closed in by 
high steep hills all round, that there seemed to be no egress save 
through the narrower path by which we had come, until one 
rugged hill-side seemed to open, and, shutting out the moonlight 
as we passed into its gloomy throat, wrapped our new course in 
shade and darkness. 

We had left Harrisburgh on Friday. On Sunday morning 
we arrived at the foot of the mountain, which is crossed by rail- 
road. There are ten inclined planes j five ascending, and five 
descending ; the carriages are dragged up the former, and let 
slowly down the latter, by means of stationary engines ; the 
comparatively level spaces between, being traversed, sometimes 
by horse, and sometimes by engine power, as the case demands. 
Occasionally the rails are laid upon the extreme verge of a giddy 
precipice ; and looking from the carriage window, the traveller 
gazes sheer down, without a stone or scrap of fence beiween, 
into the mountain depths below. The journey is very carefully 
made, however ; only two carriages travelling together ; and 
while proper precautions are taken, is not to be dreaded for its 
dangers. 

It was very pretty travelling thus, at a rapid pace along the 
heights of the mountain in a keen wind, to look down into a 
valley full of light and softness : catching glimpses, through 
the tree-tops, of scattered cabins 5 children running to the 
doors; dogs bursting out to bark, whom we could see without 
hearing ; terrified pigs scampering homewards ; families sitting 
out in their rude gardens ; cows gazing upward with a stupid 



PITTSBURG. 



193 



indifference j men in their shirt-sleeves looking on at their un> 
finished houses, planning oul to-morrow's work; and we riding 
onward, high above them, like a whirlwind. It was amusing, 
too, when we had dined, and rallied down a steep pass, having 
no other moving power than the weight of the carriages them- 
selves, to see the engine released, long after us, come buzzing 
down alone, like a great insect, its back of green and gold so 
shining in the sun, that if it had spread a pair of wings and 
soared away, no one would have had occasion, as I fancied, 
for the least surprise. But it stopped short of us in a very 
business-like manner when we reached the canal; and, before 
we left Ihc wharf, went panting up this hill again, with the 
passengers who had w aited our arrival for the means of tra- 
versing the road by which we had come. 

On the Monday evening, furnace Gres and clanking hammers 
on the banks of the canal, warned us that we approached the 
termination of this part of our journey. After going through 
another dreamy place — a long aqueduct across the Alleghany 
River, which was stranger than the bridge at Harrisburgh, 
being a vast low wooden chamber full of water— we emerged 
upon that ugly confusion of backs of buildings and crazy gal- 
leries and stairs, which always abuls on water, whether it be 
river, sea, canal, or ditch : and were at Pittsburg. 

Pittsburg is like Birmingham in England ; at least its towns- 
people say so. Setting aside the streets, the shops, the houses, 
waggons, factories, public buildings, and population, perhaps 
it maybe. It certainly has a great quantity of smoke hanging 
about it, and is famous for its iron-works. Besides the prison 
to which IJhave already referred, this tow n contains a pretty 
arsenal and other instilutions. It is very beautifully situated 
on the Alleghany Paver, over which there are twobridges; and 
the villas of the wealthier citizens sprinkled about the high 
grounds in the neighbourhood, are pretty enough. We lodged 
at a most excellent hotel, and were admirably served. As 
usual it was full of boarders, was very large, and had a broad 
colonnade to every story of the house, 

We tarried here, three days. Our next point was Ginein- 

13 



194 



PITTSBURG. 



nali : and as tin's was a steamboat journey, and "western steam- 
boats usually blow up one or two a week in the season, it was 
advisable to collect opinions in reference to the comparative 
safety of the vessels bound that way, then lying in the river. 
One called The Messenger was the best recommended. She had 
been advertised to start positively, every day for a fortnight or 
so, and had not gone yet, nor did her captain seem to have any 
very fixed intention on the subject. But this is the custom . 
for if the law were to bind down a free and independent citizen 
to keep his ^vord with the public, what would become of the 
liberty of the subject ? Besides, it is in the way of trade. And 
if passsengers be decoyed in the way of trade, and people be 
inconvenienced in the way of trade, what man, who is a sharp 
tradesman himself, shall say "We must put a stop to this 1 '? 

Impressed by the deep solemnity of the public announce- 
ment, I (being then ignorant of these usages) was for hurrying 
on board in a breathless slate, immediately ; but receiving pri- 
vate and confidential information that the boat would certainly 
not start until Friday, April the First, we made ourselves very 
comfortable in the mean while, and went on board at noon that 
day, 



TO CINCINNATI. 




CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH 



FROM PITTSBURG TO CINCINNATI IN A WESTERN STEAM BOAT. 
CINCINNATI. 

The Messenger was one among a crowd of high-pressure 
steamboats, clustered together by the wharf-side, w hich, looked 
down upon from the rising ground that forms the landing- 
place, and backed by the lofty bank on the opposite side of the 
river, appeared no larger than so many floating models. She 
had some forty passengers on board, exclusive of the poorer 
persons on the lower j^L ; and in half an hour, or less, pro- 
ceeded on ner way. |^ 

We had, for ourselves, a liny state-room with two berths in 
it, opening out of the ladies' cabin. There was, undoubtedly, 
something satisfactory in this "location," inasmuch as it was in 
the stern, and w e had been a great many times very gravely 
recommended to keep as far aft as possible, "because the 
steamboats generally blew up forward." Nor was this an un- 
necessary caution, as the occurrence and circumstances of more 
than one such fatality during our stay sufficiently testifled. 
Apart from this source of self-congratulation, it was an un- 
speakable relief to have any place, no matter how confined, 
where one could be alone; and as the row of little chambers 
of which this was one, had each a second glass-door besides 
that in the ladies' cabin, which opened on a narrow gallery 
outside the vessel, where the other passengers seldom came, 
and w here one could sit in peace and gaze upon the shifting 



138 



PITTSBURG TO CINCINNATI. 



prospect, we took possession of our new quarters with much 
pleasure. 

If the native packets I have already described be unlike any- 
thing we are in the habit of seeing on water, these western 
vessels are still more foreign to all the ideas we are accustomed 
to entertain of boats. I hardly know what to liken them to, 
or how to describe them. 

In the first place, they have no mast, cordage, tackle, rigging, 
or other such boat-like gear; nor have they anything in their 
shape at all calculated to remind one of a boat's head, stern, 
sides, or keel. Except that they are in the water, and display 
a couple of paddle-boxes, they might be intended, for anything 
that appears to the contrary, to perform some unknown service, 
high and dry, upon a moutain top. There is no visible deck, 
even : nothing but a long, black, ugly roof, covered with 
burnt -out feathery sparks ; above which tower two iron chim- 
neys, and a hoarse escape-valve, and a glass steerage-house. 
Then, in order as the eye descends towards the water, are the 
sides, and doors, and windows of the state-rooms, jumbled as 
oddly together as though they formed a small street, built by 
the varying tastes of a dozen men : tbMvhole is supported on 
beams and pillars resting on a dirty "Wrge, but a few inches 
above the water's edge \ and in the narrow space between this 
upper structure and this barge's deck, are the furnace fires 
and machinery, open at the sides to every wind that blows, and 
every storm of rain it drives along its path. 

Passing one of these boats at night, and seeing the great body 
of fire, exposed as I have just described, that rages and roars 
beneath the frail pile of painted wood : the machinery, not 
warded oil or guarded in any way, but doing its work in the 
midst of the crowd of idlers and emigrants and children, who 
throng the lower deck,- under the management, too, of reckless 
men whose acquaintance with its mysteries may have been of 
six months' standing : one feels directly that the wonder is, not 
that there should be so many fatal accidents, but that any jour- 
ney should be safely made. 

Within, there is one long narrow cabin, the whole length of 



PITTSBURG TO CDJCIXN'ATI. 



199 



the boat; from which the state-rooms open, on bath sides. A 
small portion of it at the stem, is partitioned off for the ladies ; 
and the bar is at the opposite extreme. There is a long table 
down the centre, and at either end a stove. The washing- ap- 
paratus is forward, on the deck. It is a little better than on 
board the canal-boat, but not much. In all modes of travelling-, 
the American customs, with reference to the means of personal 
cleanliness and wholesome ablution, are extremely negligent 
and filthy ; and I strongly incline to the belief] that a con- 
siderable amount of illness is referable to this cause. 

We are to be on board the Messenger three days \ arriving at 
Cincinnati (barring accidents) on Monday morning. There are 
three meals a day. Lreakfast at seven, dinner at half-past 
twelve, supper about six. At each, there are a great many 
small dishes and plates upon the table, with very little iu them; 
so that although there is every appearance of a mighty "spread, 1 :" 
there is seldom really more than a joint : except for those w ho 
fancy slices of beet-root, shreds of dried beef, complicated en- 
tanglements of yellow pickle ; maize, Indian corn, apple-sauce, 
and pumpkin. 

Some people fancy alMicse little dainties together (and sweet 
preserves beside;, by Way ol" relish to their roast pig. They 
arc generally those dyspeptic ladies and gentlemen who eat 
unheard-of quantities of hot corn bread (almost as good for the 
digestion as a kneaded pin-cushion) , for breakfast, and for sup- 
per. Those who do not observe this custom, and who help 
themselves several times instead, usually suck their knives and 
forks meditatively, until they have decided what to lake next : 
then pull them out of their mouths; put them in the dish ; help 
themselves ; and fall to work again. At dinner, there is no- 
thing to drink upon the table, but great jugs full of cold water. 
-Nobody says anything, at any meal, to anybody. All the 
passengers arc very dismal, and seem to have tremendous 
secrets weighing on their minds. There is no conversation, no 
laughter, no cheerfulness, no sociality, except in spitting 5 and 
that is done in silent fellowship round the stove, when the meal 
is over. Every man sits down, dull and languid j s wallows his 



200 



PITTSBURG TO CINCIMATI. 



fare as if breakfasts, dinners, and suppers, were necessities of 
nature never to be coupled with recreation or enjoyment ; and 
having bolted his food in a gloomy silence, bolts himself in the 
same state. But for these animal observances, you might 
suppose the whole male portion of the company to be the 
melancholy ghosts of [departed book-keepers, who had fallen 
dead at the desk : such is their weary air of business and cal- 
culation. Undertakers on duly would be sprightly beside them; 
and a collation of funeral-baked meats, in comparison with 
these meals, would be a sparkling festivity. 

The people are all alike, too. There is no diversity of cha- 
racter. They travel about on the same errands, say and do 
the same things in exactly the same manner, and follow in 
the same dull cheerless round. All down the long table, there 
is carcely a man who is in anything different from hisneigbour. 
It is quite a relief to have, sitting opposite, that little girl of 
fifteen with the loquacious chin : who, to do her justice, acts 
up to it, and fully identifies nature's handwriting, for of all the 
small chatterboxes that ever invaded the repose af a drowsy 
ladies' cabin, she is the first and foremost. The beautiful girl, 
who sits a little beyond her — further down the table there — 
married the young man with the dark whiskers,who sits beyond 
her, only last month. They are going to settle in the very Far 
West, where he has lived four years, but where she has never 
been. They were both overturned in a stage coach the other 
day (a bad omen anywhere else, where overturns are not so 
common), and his head, which bears the marks of a recent 
wound, is bound up still . She was hurt too, at the same time, 
and lay insensible for some days ; bright as her eyes are, now. 

Further dow n still, sits a man who is going some miles beyond 
their place of destination, to " improve" a newly discovered 
copper mine. He carries the village — that is to be — w ith him 
a few frame cottages, and an apparatus for smelting the copper. 
He carries its people too. They are partly American and partly 
Irish, and herd together on the lower deck; w here they amused 
themselves last evening till the night was pretty far advanced, 
by alternately firing off pistols and singing hymns. 



PITTSBLRC TO CINCINNATI 



201 



They, and the very few who have been left at table twenty 
minutes, rise, and go away. We do so too ; and passing through 
our little state-room, resume our seats in the quiet gallery 
without. 

A fine broad river always, but in some parts much wider 
than in others : and then there is usually a green island, 
covered with trees, dividing it into two streams. Occasionally, 
we stop for a few minutes, maybe to take in wood, may be for 
passengers, at some small town or village (I ought to say city, 
e\ ry place is a city here;: but the banks are for the most part 
deep solitudes, overgrown with trees, which, hereabouts, are 
already in leaf and very green. For miles, and miles, and 
miles, these solitudes are unbroken by any sign of human life 
or trace of human footstep ; nor is anything seen to move about 
them but the blue jay, whose colour is so bright, and yet so 
delicate, that it looks like a flying flower. At lengthened inter- 
vals a log-cabin, with its little space of cleared land about it, 
nestles under a rising ground ; and sends its thread of blue 
smoke curling up into the sky. It stands in the corner of the 
poor field of wheat, which is full of great unsightly stumps, 
like earthy butchers'-blocks. Sometimes the ground is only 
just now cleared : the felled trees lying yet upon the soil : and 
the log-houi-e only this morning begun. As we pass this 
clearing, the settler leans upon his axe or hammer, and looks 
wistfully at the people from the world. The children creep out 
of the temporary hut, which is like a gipsy tent upon the ground, 
and clap their hands and shout. The dog only glances round 
at us; and then looks up into his master's face again, as if he 
w ere rendered uneasy by any suspension of the common busi- 
ness, and had nothing more to do w ith pleasurers. And still 
there is the same, eternal foreground. The river has washed 
away its banks, ; and stalely trees have fallen down into the 
stream. Some have been there so long, that they arc mere 
dry grizzly skeletons. Some have just toppled over, and hav- 
ing earth yet about their rcols, are bathing their green heads 
in the river, and putting forth new shoots and branches. Some 
are almost sliding down, as you look at them. And some were 



.202 



PITTSBURG TO CINCINNATI. 



drowned se long ago, that their bleached arms start out from 
the current, and seem to try to grasp the boat, and drag it 
under water. 

Through such a scene as this, the unwieldy machine takes 
its hoarse sullen way : venting, at every revolution of the 
paddles, a loud high-pressure blast; enough, one would think, 
to w r aken up the host of Indians who lie buried in a great 
mound yonder ■ so old, that mighty oaks and other forest 
trees have struck their roots into its earth ; and so high, that 
it is a hill, even among the hills that Nature planted round it. 
The very river, as though it shared one's feelings of compas- 
sion for the extinct tribes who lived so pleasantly here, in their 
blessed ignorance of white existence , hundreds of years ago , 
steals out of its w r ay to ripple near this mound t and there are 
few places where the Ohio sparkles more brightly than in Big 
Grave Creek. 

All this I see, as I sit in the little stern-gallery, mentioned 
just now. Evening slowly steals upon the landscape, and 
changes it before me, when we stop to set some emigrants 
ashore. 

Five men, as many women, and a little girl. All their 
worldly goods are a bag, a large chest, and an old chair : one, 
old, high-backed, rush-bottomed chair : a solitary settler in 
itself. They are rowed ashore in the boat, while the vessel 
stands a little off awaiting its return, the water being shal- 
low. They are landed at the foot of a high bank, on the 
summit of which are a few log-cabins, attainable only by a long 
winding path. It is growing dusk; but the sun is very red, 
and shines in the water and on some of the tree-tops, like 
fire. 

The men get out of the boat first ; help out the women ; take 
out the bag, the chest, the chair; bid the rowers " good bye;" 
and shove the boat off for them. At the first plash of the oars 
in the water, the oldest woman of the party sits down in the 
old chair, close to the w r aler's edge, without speaking a word. 
None of the others sit down, though the chest is large enough 
for many seats. They all stand where they landed, as if 



PITTSBURG TO CINCINNATI. 



.203 



stricken into stone ; and look after the boat. So they remain, 
quite still and silent : the old woman and her old chair, in the 
centre; the bag and chest upon the shore, without anybody 
heeding them : all eyes fixed upon the boat. It comes along- 
g de, is made fast, the men jump on board, the engine is put 
in motion, and we go hoarsely on again. There they stand yet, 
without the motion of a hand. I can see them, through my 
glass, when, in the distance and increasing darkness, they are 
mere specks to the eye : lingering there still : the old woman 
in the old chair, and ail the rest about her : not stirring in the 
least degree. And thus I slowly lose them. 

The night is dark, and we proceed within the shadow of the 
vooded bank; which mokes it darker. After gliding past the 
sombre maze of boughs for a long time, we come upon an open 
space where the tall trees are burning. The shape of overy 
branch and twig is expressed in a deep red glow, and as the 
light wind stirs and r utiles it, they seem to vegetate in fire. 
It is such a sight as we read of in legends of enchanted forests : 
saving that it is sad to see these noble works wasting away so 
awfully, alone ; and to think how many years must come and 
go before the magic that created them will rear their like upon 
this ground again. liut the time will come : and when, in 
their changed ashes, the growth of centuries unborn has struck 
its rools, the restless men of distant ages will repair to these 
again unpeopled solitudes; and their fellows, in cities far 
away, ihat slumber now, perhaps, beneath the rolling sea, 
will read, in language strange to any ears in being now but very 
old to them, of primeval forests where the axe was never 
heard, and where the jungled ground w T as never trodden by a 
human foot. 

Midnight and sleep blot out these scenes and thoughts : and 
when the morning shines again, it gilds the house-tops of a 
lively city, before whose broad paved wharf the boat is moored ; 
with other boats, and flags, and moving wheels, and hum of 
men around it; as though there were not a solitary or silent 
rood of ground within the compass of a thousand miles. 

Cincinnati is a beautiful city ; cheerful, thriving, and ani- 



CINCINNATI. 



mated. I have not often seen a place that commends itself so 
favourably and pleasantly to a stranger at the first glance as 
this does : with its clean houses of red and white, its well-paved 
roads, and footways of bright tile. Nor does it become less 
prepossessing on a closer acquaintance. The streets are broad 
and airy, the shops extremely good, the private residences re- 
markable for their elegance and neatness. There is something 
of invention and fancy In the varying styles of these latter erec- 
tions, which, after the dull company of the steamboat, is per- 
fectly delightful, as conveying an assurance that there are such 
qualities still in existence. The disposition to ornament these 
pretty villas and render them attractive, leads to the culture of 
well-kept gardens, the sight of which, to those who walk along 
the streets, is inexpressibly refreshing and agreeable. I was 
quite charmed with the appearance of the town, and its adjoin- 
ing suburb of Mount Auburn: from which the city, lying in an 
amphitheatre of hills, forms a picture of remarkable beauty, 
and is seen to great advantage. 

There happened to be a great Temperance Convention held 
here on the day after our arrival; and as the order of march 
brought the procession under the windows of the hotel 
in which we lodged, when they started n the morning, I had 
a good opportunity of seeing it. It comprised several thousand 
men ; the members of various "Washington Auxiliary Temper- 
ance Societies ; " and was marshalled by officers on horseback, 
who cantered briskly up and down the line, with scarves and 
ribbons of bright colours fluttering out behind them gaily. 
There were bands of music too, and banners out of number: 
and it was a fresh, holiday-looking concourse altogether. 

I was particularly pleased to sec the Irishmen, who formed 
a distinct society among themselves, and mustered very strong 
with their green scarves; carrying their national Harp and 
their Portrait of Father ?.Iathew, high above the people's 
heads. They looked as jolly and good-humoured as ever ; and ; 
working the hardest for their living and doing any kind of 
sturdy labour that came in their way, were the most inde- 
pendent fellows there, I thought. 



CINCINNATI. 



205 



The banners were very well painted, and flaunted down the 
>treet famously. There was the smiting of the rock, and the 
ashing forth of the waters; and there was a temperate man 
with considerable of a hatchet " (as the standard-bearer would 
probably have said}, aiming a deadly blow at a serpent which 
was apparently about to spring upon him from the top of a 
barrel of spirits. Bat the chief feature of this part of the 
show was a huge allegorical device, borne among the ship- 
carpenters, on one side whereof the steamboat Alcohol was 
represented bursting her boiler and exploding with a great 
crash, while upon the other, the good ship Temperance sailed 
away with a fair wind, to the heart's content of the captain, 
crew, and passengers. 

After going round the town, the procession repaired to a 
certain appointed place, where, as the printed programme set 
forth, it would be received by the children of the different free 
schools, u singing Temperance Songs. " I was prevented from 
getting there, in time to hear these Little Warblers, or to re- 
port upon this novel kind of vocal entertainment : novel, at 
least, to me : but I found, in a large open space,, each society 
gathered round its own banners, and listening in silent atten- 
tion to its owns orator. The speeches, judging from the little 
I could hear of them, were certainly adapted to the occasion, 
as having that degree of relationship to cold water which wet 
blankets may claim i but the main thing was the conduct and 
appearance of the audience throughout the day; and that was 
admirable and full of promise. 

Cincinnati honourably famous for its free-schools, of which 
it has so many that no person s child among its population can, 
by possibility, want the means of education, which are 
extended, upon an average, to four thousand pupils, annually. 
I was only present in one of these establishments during the 
hours of instruction. In the boys' department, which was full 
of little urchins (varying in their ages, I should say, from six 
years old to ten or twelve), the master offered to institute an 
extemporary examination of the pupils in algebra; a proposaL, 
which, as I was by no means confident of my ability to detect 



206 



CI>CmATI. 



mistakes in that science, I declined with some alarm. In the 
girls' school, reading was proposed; and as I felt tolerably 
equal to that art, I expressed my willingness to hear a class. 
Books were distributed accordingly, and some half dozen girls 
relieved each other in reading paragraphs from English History. 
But it was a dry compilation, infinitely above their powers; 
and when they had blundered through three or four dreary 
passages concerning the Treaty of Amiens, and other thrilling 
topics of the same nature (obviously without comprehending 
ten words), I expressed myself quite satisGed. It is very pos- 
sible that they only mounted to this exalted stave in the Ladder 
of Learning, for the astonishment of a visitor ; and that at other 
times they keep upon its lower rounds; but I should have been 
much better pleased and satisfied if I had heard them exercised 
in simpler lessons, which they understood. 

As in every other place I visited, the Judges here were 
gentlemen of high character and attainments. I was in one of 
the courts for a few minutes, and found it like those to which I 
have already referred. A nuisance cause was trying •. there 
w ere not many spectators ; and the witnesses, counsel, and jury, 
formed a sort of family circle, sufficiently jocose and snug. 

The society with which I mingled, was intelligent, courteous, 
and agreeable. The inhabitants of Cincinnati are proud of their 
city, as one of the most interesting in America : and with good 
reason : for beautiful and thriving as it is now, and containing, 
as it does, a population of fifty thousand souls, but two-and- 
fifty years have passed away since the ground on which it 
stands (bought at that time for a few dollars) was a wild wood, 
and its citizens were but a handful of dwellers in scattered log- 
huts upon the river's shore. 



TO ST. LOUIS 



I 



CHAPTER THE TWELFTH. 



FROM CINCINNATI TO LOUISVILLE IN ANOTHER WESTERN STEAMBOAT *, 
AND FROM LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS IN ANOTHER. ST. LOUIS. 

Leaving Cincinnati at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, we em- 
barked for Louisville in the Pike steam-boat, which, carrying 
the mails, was a packet of a much better class than that in 
which we had come from Pittsburg. As this passage does not 
occupy more than twelve or thirteen hours, we arranged to go 
ashore that night : not coveting the distinction of sleeping in a 
state-room, when it was possible to sleep any where else. 

There chanced to be on board this boat, in addition to the 
usual dreary crowd of passengers, one Pitchlynn, a chief of the 
Choctaw tribe of Indians, who sent in his card to me, and with 
whom I had the pleasure of a long conversation. 

He spoke English perfectly well, though he had not begun to 
learn the language, he told me, until he was a young man 
grown. He had read many books 5 and Scott's poetry appeared 
to have left a strong impression on his mind : especially the 
opening of The Lady of the Lake, and the great battle scene in 
Marmion, in which, no doubt from the congeniality of the 
subjects to his own pursuits and tastes, he had great interest 
and delight. He appeared to understand correctly, all he had 
read ; and whatever fiction had enlisted his sympathy in its 
belief, had done so keenly and earnestly, I might almost say 
fiercely. He was dressed in our ordinary every-day costume, 
which hung about his fine figure loosely, and with indifferent 
grace. On my telling him that I regretted not to see him in 

14 



210 



CINCINNATI TO LOUISVILLE. 



his own attire, he threw up his right arm, for a moment, as 
though he were brandishing some heavy weapon, and answered, 
as he let it fall again, that his race were losing many things 
beside their dress, and would soon be seen upon the earth no 
more : but he wore it at home, he added proudly. 

He told me that he had been away from his home, w 7 est of the 
Mississippi, seventeen months : and was now returning. He 
had been chiefly at Washington on some negociations pending 
betw een his Tribe and the Government • w hich were not settled 
yet (he said in a melancholy way ), and he feared never would 
be : for what could a few poor Indians do, against such well- 
skilled men of business as the whites ? He had no love for 
Washington j tired of towns and cities very soon ; and longed 
for the Forest and the Prairie. 

I asked him what he thought of Congress ? He answered, with 
a smile, that it wanted dignity, in an Indian's eyes. 

He would very much like, he said, to see England before he 
died j and spoke with much interest about the great things to be 
seen there. When I told him of that chamber in the British 
Museum wherein are preserved household memorials of a race 
that ceased to be, thousands of years ago, he was very attentive, 
and it was not hard to see that he had a reference in his mind 
to the gradual fading away of his ow n people. 

This led us to speak of Mr. Catlin's gallery, which he praised 
highly : observingthathisown portrait w as among the collection, 
and that all the likenesses were "elegant." Mr. Cooper, he said, 
had painted the Red Man well; and so would I, he knew, if I 
would go home with him and hunt buffaloes, which he was quite 
anxious I should do. When I told him that supposing I went, 
I should not be very likely to damage the buffaloes much, he 
took it as a great joke and laughed heartily. 

He was a remarkably handsome man : some years past forty 
I should judge; with long black hair, an aquiline nose, broad 
cheek bones, a sunburnt complexion, and a very bright, keen, 
dark, and piercing eye. There were but twenty thousand of 
the Choctaws left, he said, and their number was decreasing 
every day. A few of his brother chiefs had been obliged to 



CINCINNATI TO LOUISVILLE, 



111 



become civilised, and to make themselves acquainted with what 
the whites knew, for it was their only chance of existence. 
But they were not many ; and the rest were as they always had 
been. He dwelt on this : and said several times that unless 
they tried to assimilate themselves to their conquerors, they 
must be swept away before the strides of civilised society. 

When we shook hands at parting, I told him he must come to 
England, as he longed to see the land so much : that I should 
hope to see him there, one day : and that I could promise him 
he would be well received and kindly treated. He was evidently 
pleased by this assurance, though he rejoined with a good- 
humoured smile and an arch shake of his head, that the English 
used to be very fond of the Red Men when they wanted their 
help, but had not cared much for them, since. 

He took his leave ; as stately and complete a gentleman of 
Nature's making, as ever I beheld; and moved among the 
people in the boat, another kind of being. He sent me a 
lithographed portrait of himself soon afterwards; very like, 
though scarcely handsome enough ; which I have carefully 
preserved in memory of our brief acquaintance. 

There was nothing very interesting in the scenery of this 
day's journey, which brought us, at midnight, to Louisville. 
We slept at the Gait House; a splendid hotel; and were as 
handsomely lodged as though we had been in Paris, rather than 
hundreds of miles beyond the Alleghanies. 

The city presenting no objects of sufficient interest to detain 
us on our way, we resolved to proceed next day by another 
steamboat, the Fulton, and to join it, about noon, at a suburb 
called Portland, where it would be delayed some time in passing 
through a canal. 

The interval, after breakfast, we devoted to riding through 
the town, which is regular and cheerful : the streels being laid 
out at right angles, and planted with young trees. The 
buildings are smoky and blackened, from the use of bituminous 
coal, but an Englishmam is well used to that appearance, and 
indisposed to quarrel with it. There did not appear to be 
much business stirring ; and some unfinished buildings and 



U2 



LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS. 



improvements seemed to intimate that the city had been over- 
built in the ardour of " going a-head," and was suffering under 
the rc-aclion consequent upon such feverish forcing of its 
powers. 

On our way to Portland, we passed a ''Magistrate's office," 
which amused me as looking far more like a dame school than 
any police establishment : for this awful Institution was nothing 
but a little lazy, good-for-nothing front parlour, open to the 
street ; wherein two or three figures (I presume the magistrate 
and his myrmidons) were basking in the sunshine, the very 
effig ies of languor and repose. It was a perfect picture of Jus- 
tice retired from business for want of customers; her sword 
and scales sold off; napping comfortably with her legs upon the 
table. 

Here, as elsewhere in these parts, the road was perfectly 
alive with pigs of all ages ; lying about in every direction, fast 
asleep; or grunting along in quest of hidden dainties. I had 
always a sneaking kindness for these odd animals, and found 
a constant source of amusement, when all others failed, in 
watching their proceedings. As we were riding along this 
morning, I observed a little incident between two youthful 
pigs, which was so very human as to be inexpressibly comical 
and grotesque at the time, though I dare say, in telling, it is 
tame enough. 

One young gentleman (a very delicate porker with several 
straws sticking about his nose, betokening recent investigations 
in a .dunghill), was walking deliberately on, profoundly thinking, 
when suddenly his brother, who was lying in a miry hole un- 
seen by him, rose up immediately before his startled eyes, 
ghostly with damp mud. Never was pig's whole mass of blood 
so turned. He started back at least three feet, gazed for a 
moment, and then shot off as hard as he could go : his excessive- 
ly little (ail vibrating with speed and terror like a distracted 
pendulum. But before he had gone very far, he began to rea- 
son with himself as to the nature of this frightful appearance; 
and as he reasoned, he relaxed his speed by gradual degrees; 
until at last he slopped, and faced about. There was his bro~ 



LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS. 



thei\ wilh Ihe mud upon him glazing in the sun, yet staring 
out of the very same hole, perfectly amazed at his proceedings! 
He was no sooner assured of this ; and he assured himself so 
carefully that one may almost say he shaded his eyes with his 
hand to see the better; than he came back at a round trot, 
pounced upon him, and summarily took off a piece of his tail ; 
as a caution to him to be careful what he was about for the fu- 
ture, and never to play tricks w ith his family any more. 

We found the steamboat in the canal, waiting for the slow 
process of getting through the lock, and went on board, where 
we shortly afterwards had a new r kind of visitor in the person 
of a certain Kentucky Giant whose name is Porter, and who is 
of the moderate height of seven feet eight inches, in his 
stockings. 

There never w as a race of people w ho so completely gave the 
lie to history as these giants, or whom all the chroniclers have 
so cruelly libelled. Instead of roaring and ravaging about the 
world, constantly catering for their cannibal larders, and per- 
petually going to market in an unlawful manner, they are the 
meekest people in any man's acquaintance : rather inclining 
to milk and vegetable diet, and bearing anything for a quiet 
life. So decidedly are amiability and mildness their characte- 
ristics, that I confess I look upon that youth w ho distinguished 
himself by the slaughter of these inoffensive persons, as a false- 
hearted brigand, w ho, pretending to philanthropic motives, was 
secretly influenced only by the wealth stored up within their 
castles, and the hope of plunder. And I lean the more to this 
opinion from finding that even the historian of those exploits, 
with all his partiality for his hero, is fain to admit that the 
slaughtered monsters in question were of a very innocent and 
simple turn; extremely guileless and ready of belief ; lending a 
credulous car to the most improbable tales ; suffering them- 
selves to be easily entrapped into pits ; and even (as in the case 
of the Welsh Giant), with an excess of the hospitable politeness 
of a landlord, ripping themselves open, rather than hint at the 
possibility of their guests being versed in the vagabond arts of 
sleight-of-hand and hocus-pocus. 



114 



LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS. 



The Kentucky Giant was but another illustration of the trulh 
of this position. He had a weakness in the region of the knees, 
and a trustfulness in his long face, which appealed even to five- 
feet-nine for encouragement and support. He was only twenty- 
five years old, he said, and had grown recently, for it had been 
found necessary to make an addition to the legs of his inex- 
pressibles. At Gfleen he was a short boy ,j and in those days his 
English father and his Irish mother had rather snubbed him, 
as being too small of stature to sustain the credit of the family. 
He added that his health had not been good, though it was bet- 
ter now T ; but short people are not wanting who whisper that 
he drinks too hard. 

I understand he drives a hackney-coach, though how he does 
it, unless he stands on the footboard behind, and lies along the 
roof upon his chest, with his chin in the box, it would be diffi- 
cult to comprehend. He brought his gun with him, as a cu- 
riosity. Christened "The Little Rifle/' and displayed outside 
a shop-window, it would make the fortune of any reiail business 
in Holborn. When he had shown himself and talked a little 
while, he withdrew- with this pocket-instrument, and went 
bobbing down the cabin, among men of six feet high and up- 
wards, like a lighthouse walking among lamp-posts. 

Within a few minutes afterwards, we were out of the canal, 
and in the Ohio river again. 

The arrangements of the boat were like those of the Mes- 
senger, and the passengers were of the same order of people. 
W r e fed at the same times, on the same kind of viands, in the 
same dull manner, and with the same observances. The com- 
pany appeared to be oppressed by the same tremendous con- 
cealments, and had as little capacity of enjoyment or light- 
headedness. I never in my life did see such listless, heavy 
dulncss as brooded over these meals : the very recollection of 
it w eighs me down, and makes me, for the moment, wretched. 
Reading and writing on my knee, in our little cabin, I really 
dreaded the coming of the hour that summoned us to table ; and 
was as glad to escape from it again, as if it had been a penance 
or punishment Healthy cheerfulness and good spirits forming 



LOUSULLE 10 ST. LOUS. 



115 



a part of the banquet, I could soak ray crusts in the fountain 
with Le Sage's strolling player, and revel in their glad enjoy- 
ment : but sitting down with so many fellow-animals to ward 
off thirst and hunger as a business ; to empty, each creature, 
his Yahoo's trough as quickly as he can, and then slink sullenly 
away ; to have these social sacraments stripped of everything 
but the mere greedy satisfaction of the natural cravings ; goes 
so against the grain with me, that I seriously believe the recol- 
lection of these funeral feasts will be a waking nightmare to me 
all my life. 

There was some relief in this boat, too, which there had not 
been in the other, for the captain ^a blunt good-nalured fellow), 
had his handsome wife with him, who was disposed to be lively 
and agreeable, as were a few other lady-passengers who had 
their seats about us at the same end of the table. But nothing 
could have made head against the depressing influence of the 
general body. There was a magnetism of dulness in them 
which would have beaten down the most facetious companion 
that the earlh ever knew. A jest would have been a crime, and 
a smile would have faded into a grinning horror. Such deadly 
leaden people ; such systematic plodding weary insupportable 
heaviness ; such a mass of animated indigestion in respect of 
all that was genial, jovial, frank, social, or hearty; never, 
sure, was brought together elsewhere since the w orld began. 

Nor was the scenery, as we approached the junction of the 
Ohio and Mississippi rivers, at all inspiriting in its influence. 
The trees were stunted in their growth ; the banks were low 
and flat ; the settlements and log-cabins fewer in number : their 
inhabitant more wan and wretched than any we had en- 
countered yet. No songs of birds were in the air, no pleasant 
scents, no moving lights and shadows from swift passing clouds. 
Hour after hour, the changeless glare of the hot, unwinking 
sky, shone upon the same monotonous objects. Hour after 
hour, the river rolled along, as wearily and slowly as the time 
itself. 

At length, upon the morning of the third day, we arrived 
at a spot so much more desolate than any we had yet beheld, 



lit; 



L0USV1LLE TO ST. LOUIS. 



that the fbrlorncst places we had passed, were, in comparaison 
with it, full of interest. At the junction of the two rivers, on 
ground so flat and low and marshy, that at certain seasons 
of the year it is inundated to the house-tops, lies a breeding- 
place of fever, ague, and death; vaunted in England as a mine 
of Golden Hope, and speculated in, on the faith of monstrous 
representations, to many people's ruin. A dismal swamp , on 
which the half-built houses rot away : cleared here and there 
for the space of a few yards ; and teeming, then, with rank 
unwholesome vegetation, in whose baleful shade the wretched 
wanderers who are tempted hither, droop, and die, and lay 
their bones; the hateful Mississippi circling and eddying before 
it, and turning off upon its southern course a slimy monster 
hideous to behold ; a hotbed of disease, an ugly sepulchre, a 
grave uncheeredby any gleam of promise : a place without one 
single quality, in earth or air or water, to commend it : such is 
this dismal Cairo. 

But what words shall describe the Mississippi, great father 
of rivers, who (praise be to Heaven) has no young children like 
him ! An enormous ditch, sometimes two or three miles wide, 
running liquid mud, six miles an hour : its strong and frothy 
current choked and obstructed everywhere by huge logs and 
whole forest trees : now twining themselves together in great 
rafts, from the interstices of which a sedgy lazy foam works 
up, to float upon the water's top; now rolling past like mon- 
strous bodies, their tangled roots showing like malted hair ; now 
glancing singly by like giant leeches ; and now writhing round 
and round in the vortex of some small whirlpool, like wounded 
snakes. The banks low, the trees dwarfish , the marshes 
swarming with frogs, the wretched cabins few and far apart, 
their inmates hollow-cheeked and pale, the weather very hot, 
mosquitoes penetrating into every crack and crevice of the 
boat, mud and slime on everything : nothing pleasant in its 
aspect, but the harmless lightning which flickers every night 
upon the dark horizon. 

For two days we toiled up this foul stream, striking con- 
stantly against the floating timber, or stopping to avoid those 



L0L1SV1LLE TO ST. LOUS. 



217 



more dangerous obstacles, the snags, or sawyers, which are the 
hidden trunks of trees that have their roots below the tide. 
When the nights are very dark, the look-out stationed in the 
head of the boat, knows by the ripple of the water if any great 
impediment be near at hand, and rings a bell beside him, which 
is the signal for the engine to be stopped : but always in the 
night this bell has work to do, and after every ring, there comes 
a blow which renders it no easy matter to remain in bed. 

The decline of day here was very gorgeous ; tinging the fir- 
mament deeply with red and gold, up to the very keystone of 
the arch above us. As the sun went down behind the bank, 
the slightest blades of grass upon it seemed to become as dis- 
tinctly visible as the arteries in the skeleton of a leaf 5 and 
when, as it slowly sank, the red and golden bars upon the water 
grew dimmer, and dimmer yet, as if they were sinking too ; 
and all the glowing colours of departing day paled, inch by 
inch, before the sombre night; the scene became a thousand 
times more lonesome and more dreary than before, and all its 
influences darkened with the sky. 

We drank the muddy water of this river while we were upon 
it. It is considered wholesome by the natives, and is something 
more opaque than gruel. I have seen water like it at the Filter- 
shops, but now here else. 

On the fourth night after leaving Louisville, we reached 
St. Louis, and here I witnessed the conclusion of an incident, 
trifling enough in itself but very pleasant to see, which had 
interested me during the whole journey. 

There w as a little woman on board, with a little baby ; and 
both little woman and little child were cheerful, good-looking, 
bright-eyed, and fair to see. The little woman had been pass- 
ing a long time with her sick mother in New York, and had 
left her home in St. Louis, in that condition in which ladies who 
truly love their lords desire to be. The baby was born in her 
mother's house : and she had not seen her husband (to w hom 
she was now returning), for twelve months : having left him a 
month or two after their marriage. 

Well, to be sure there never was a little woman so full of 



218 



LOUSVILLE TO ST. LOUS. 



hope, and tenderness, and love, and anxiety, as this little 
woman was : and all daylong she wondered whether u He" 
would be at the wharf ; and whether u He" had got her letter j 
and whether, if she sent the baby ashore by somebody else, 
"He" would know it, meeting it in the street : which, seeing 
that he hod never set eyes upon it in his life, was not very 
likely in the abstract, but was probable enough, to the young 
mother. She was such an artless little creature ; and was in 
such a sunny, beaming, hopeful state; and let out all this 
matter clinging close about her heart, so freely; that all the 
other lady passengers entered into the spirit of it as much as 
she ; and the captain (who heard all about it from his wife), 
was wondrous sly, I promise you : inquiring, every time we 
met at table, as in forgetfulness, whether she expected anybody 
to meet her at St. Louis, and whether she w r ould want to go 
ashore the night w r e reached it (but he supposed she wouldn't), 
and cutting many other dry jokes of that nature. There was 
one little w r eazen, dried-apple-faced old woman, who took oc- 
casion to doubt the constancy of husbands in such circumstances 
of bereavement ; and there was another lady (with a lap dog) 
old enough to moralize on the lightness of human affections, 
and yet not so old that she could help nursing the baby, now 
and then, or laughing with the rest, when the little woman 
called it by its father's name, and asked it all manner of fantastic 
questions concerning him in the joy of her heart. 

It was something of a blow to the little woman, that when 
we were within twenty miles of our destination, it became 
clearly necessary to put this baby to bed. But she got over it 
with the same good humour ; tied a handkerchief round her 
head; and came out into the little gallery with the rest. Then, 
such an oracle as she became in reference to the localities ! and 
such facetiousncss as was displayed by the married ladies ! and 
such sympathy as was shown by the single ones! and such peals 
of laughter as the little woman herself (who would just as soon 
have cried) greeted every jest with! 

At last, there were the lights of St. Louis, and here was the 
wharf, and those were the steps : and the little woman covering 



ST. LOUS. 



219 



her face with her hands, and laughing (or seeming to laugh) 
more than ever, ran into her own cabin, and shut herself up. 

I have no doubt that in the charming inconsistency of such 
excitement, she stopped her ears, lest she should hear 

II Him" asking for her : but I did not see her do it. 

Then, a great crowd of people rushed on board, though the 
boat was not yet made fast,, but was wandering about, among 
the other boats, to find a landing place : and everybody looked 
for the husband : and nobody saw him : when, in the midst of 
us all — Heaven knows how she ever got there — there was the 
li I tie woman clinging with both arms tight round the neck of a 
fine, good-looking, sturdy young fellow! and in a moment 
afterwards, there she was again, actually clapping her little 
hands for joy, as she dragged him through the small door of 
her small cabin, to look at the baby as he lay asleep ! 

We went to a large hotel, called the Planters' House : built 
like an English hospital, with long passages and bare walls, 
and sky-lights above the room-doors for the free circulation of 
air. There were a great many boarders in it; and as many 
lights sparkled and glistened from the windows down into the 
street below, w hen we drove up, as if it had been illuminated 
on some occasion of rejoicing. It is an excellent house, and 
the proprietors have most bountiful notions of providing the 
creature comforts. Dining alone with my wife in our own 
room, one day, I counted fourteen dishes on the table at once. 

In the old French portion of the tow r n, the thoroughfares are 
n arrow and crooked, and some of the houses are very quaint 
and picturesque : being built of wood, with tumble-down galle- 
ries before the windows, approachable by stairs or rather 
ladders, from the street. There are queer little barbers' shops 
and drinking-houses too, in this quarter : abundance of crazy 
old tenements with blinking casements, such as may be seen in 
Flanders. Some of these ancient habitations, with high garret 
gable-windows perking into the roofs, have a kind of French 
shrug about them ; and being lop-sided with age, appear to hold 



220 



ST. LOUS. 



Ihcir heads askew, besides ; as if they were grimacing in astonish- 
ment at the American Improvements. . 

It is hardly necessary to say, that these consist of wharfs 
and warehouses, and new buildings in all directions ; ond of a 
great many vast plans which are still ''progressing." Already, 
however, some very good houses, broad streets, and marble- 
fronted shops, have gone so far a-head as to be in a state of com- 
pletion ; and the town bids fair in a few years to improve con- 
siderably ; though it is not likely ever to vie, in point of 
elegance or beauty, with Cincinnati. 

The Roman Catholic religion, introduced here by the early 
French settlers, prevails extensively. Among the public insti- 
tutions arc a Jesuit college ; a convent for u the Ladies of the 
Sacred Heart:" and a large chapel attached to the college; 
which was in course of erection at the time of my visit, and was 
intended to be consecrated on the second of December in the 
present year. The architect of this building, is one of the reve- 
rend fathers of the school, and the works proceed under his sole 
direction. The organ will be sent from Belgium. 

In addition to these establishments, there is a Roman Catholic 
cathedral, dedicated to Saint Francis Xavier ; and a hospital, 
founded by the munificence of a deceased resident, who was a 
member of that church. It also sends missionaries from hence 
among the Indian tribes. 

The Unitarian church is represented, in this remote place, as 
in most other parts of America, by a gentleman of great worth 
and excellence. The poor have good reason to remember and 
bless it, for it befriends them, and aids the cause of rational 
education, without any sectarian or selfish views. It is liberal 
in all its actions ; of kind construction ; and of wide bene- 
volence. 

There are three free-schools already erected, and in full 
operation, in this city. A fourth is building, and will soon 
be opened. 

No man ever admits the unhealthiness of the place he dwells 
in (unless he is going away from it), and I shall therefore, I 
have not doubt, be at issue with the inhabitants of Saint Louis, 



ST. LOUIS. 221 

in questioning the perfect salubrity of its climate, and in hinting 
that I think it must rather dispose to fever, in the summer and 
autumnal seasons. Just adding, that it is very hot, lies among 
great rivers, and has vast tracts of undrained swampy land 
around it, I leave the reader to form his own opinion. 

As I had a great desire to see a Prairie before turning back 
from the farthest point of my wanderings ; and as some gentle- 
men of the town had, in their hospitable consideration, an equal 
desire to gratify me; a day was fixed, before my departure, for 
an expedition to the Looking-Glass Prairie, w 7 hich is within 
thirty miles of the town. Deeming it possible that my readers 
may not object to know what kind of thing such a gipsy party 
may be at that distance from home, and among what sort of 
objects it moves, I will describe the jaunt in another chapter. 



* 



I 



TO THE PRAIRIE. 



I 



CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH. 



A JAUNT TO THE LOOKING-GLASS PRAIRIE AND BACK. 

I may premise that the word Prairie is variously pronounced 
paraaer, parearer, and paroarer. The latter mode of pronun- 
ciation is perhaps the most in favour. 

We were fourteen in all, and all young men : indeed it is a 
singular though very natural feature in the society of these 
distant settlements, that it is mainly composed of aventurous 
persons in the prime of life, and has very few grey heads among 
it. There were no ladies : the trip being a fatiguing one : and 
we were to start at five o'clock in the morning, punctually. 

I was called at four, that I might be certain of keeping nobody 
waiting ; and having got some bread and milk for breakfast, 
threw up the window and looked down into the street, expect- 
ing to see the w hole party busily astir, and great preparations 
going on below. But as everything was very quiet, and the 
street presented that hopeless aspect with which five o'clock in 
the morning is familiar elsewhere, I deemed it as well to go to 
bed again, and went accordingly. 

I awoke again at seven o'clock, and by that time the party 
had assembled, and were gathered round one light carriage, 
with a very stout axletree ; one something on wheels like an 
amateur carrier s cart ; one double phaeton of great antiquity 
and unearthly construction ; one gig with a great hole in its 
back and a broken head ; and one rider on horseback who was 
to go on before. I got into the first coach with three com- 

15 



226 



A .VAljINT TO THE 



panions ; the rcstbestowed themselves in the other vehicles ; two 
large baskets were made fast to the lightest ; two large stone 
jars in wicker cases, technically known as demi-johns, were 
consigned to the " least rowdy" of the party for safe keeping; 
and the procession moved off to the ferry-boat, in which it was 
to cross the river bodily, men, horses, carriages, and ail, as 
the manner in these parts is. 

We got over the river in due course, and mustered again be- 
fore a little wooden box on wheels, hove down all aslant in a 
morass, with " merchant taylor" painted in very large letters 
over the door. Having settled the order of proceeding, and 
the road to be taken, we started off once more and began to 
make our way through an ill-favoured Black Hollow, called, 
less expressively, the American Bottom. 

The previous day had been — not to say hot, for the term is 
weak and lukewarm in its power of conveying an idea of the 
temperature. The town had been on fire ; in a blaze. But at 
night it had come on to rain in torrents, and all night long it 
had rained without cessation. We had a pair of very strong 
horses, but travelled at the rate of little more than a couple of 
miles an hour, through one unbroken slough of black mud and 
water. It had no variety but in depth. Now it was only half 
over the wheels, now it hid the axletree, and now the coach 
sank down in it almost to the windows. The air resounded in 
all directions with the loud chirping of the frogs, who, with the 
pigs (a coarse, ugly breed, as unwholesome-looking as though 
they were the spontaneous growth of the country), had the 
whole scene to themselves. Here and there we passed a log 
hut : but the wretched cabins were wide apart and thinly scat- 
tered, for though the soil is very rich in this place few people 
can exist in such a deadly atmosphere. On either side of the 
track, if it deserve the name, was the thick bush and every- 
where was stagnant, slimy, rotten, filthy water. 

As it is the custom in these parts to give a horse a gallon or 
so of cold water whenever he is in a foam with heat, we halted 
lor that purpose, at a log-inn in the wood, far removed from 
any other residence. It consisted of one room, bare-roofed and 



LOOKING-GLASS PRAIiUE AND BACK. 



bare-walled of course, with a loft above. The ministering 
priest was a swarthy young savage, in a shirt of cotton print 
like bed-furniture, and a pair of ragged trousers. There were 
a couple of young boys, too, nearly naked, lying idly by the 
well ; and they, and he, and the traveller at the inn, turned out 
to look at us. 

The traveller was an old man with a grey gristly beard two 
inches long , a shaggy moustache of the same hue, and enor- 
mous eyebrows j which almost obscured his lazy, semi- 
drunken glance, as he stood regarding us with folded arms : 
poising himself alternately upon his toes and heels. On being 
addressed by one of the party, he drew (nearer, and said, rub- 
bing his chin (which scraped under his horny hand like fresh 
gravel beneath a nailed shoe), that he was from Delaware, and 
had lately bought a farm "down th; re ' pointing into one of 
the marshes where the stunted trees were thickest. He was 
u going," he added, to St. Louis, to fetch his family, whom 
he had left behind; but he seemed iu no great hurry to bring 
on these encumbrances, for when we moved away, he loitered 
back into the cabin, and was plainly bent on stopping there so 
long as his money lasted. He was a great politician of course, 
and explained his opinions at some length to one of our com- 
pany; but I only remember that he concluded with two senti- 
ments, one of which was, Somebody for ever ! and the other, 
Blast everybody else ! which is by no means a bad abstract of 
the general creed in these matters. 

When the horses were swollen out to about twice their na- 
tural dimensions (there seems to be an idea here, that this kind 
of inflation improves their going), we went forward again, 
through mud and mire, and damp, and festering heat, and brake 
and bush, attended alw ays by the music of the frogs and pigs, 
until nearly noon, when we halted at a place called Belleville. 

Belleville was a small collection of wooden houses, huddled 
together in the very heart of the bush and swamp Many of 
them had singularly bright doors of red and yellow, for the 
place had been lately visittd by a travelling painter, "who got 
along, as 1 was told, 4 4 by eating his way." The criminal 



A JAUNT TO THE 



court was sitting, and was at that moment trying some crimi- 
nals for horsestealing : with whom it would most likely go 
hard : for live stock of all kinds being necessarily very much 
exposed in the woods, is held by the community in rather 
higher value than human life ; and for this reason, juries gene- 
rally make a point of finding all men indicted for cattle-stealing, 
guilty, whether or no. 

The horses belonging to the bar, the judge, and witnesses, 
were tied to temporary racks set up roughly in the road ; by 
which is to be understood, a forest path, nearly knee-deep in 
mud and slime. 

There was an hotel in this place which, like all hotels in 
America, had its large dining-room for the public table. It 
wasan odd, shambling, low-roofed out-house, half-cowshed and 
half kitchen, with a coarse brown canvas table-cloth, and tin 
sconces stuck against the walls, to hold candles at supper-time. 
The horseman had gone forward to have coffee and some 
eatables prepared, and they were bythis time nearly ready. He 
had ordered " wheat-bread and chicken fixings," in preference 
to u corn-bread and common doings." The latter kind of re- 
fection includes only pork and bacon. The former comprehends 
broiled ham, sausages, veal cutlets, steaks, and such other 
viands of that nature as may be supposed, by a tolerably wide 
poetical construction, to t4 fix" a chicken comfortably in the 
digestive organs of any lady or gentleman. 

On one of the door-posts at this inn, was a tin plate, whereon 
was inscribed in characters of gold " Doctor Crocus and on a 
sheet of paper, pasted up by the side of this plate, was a written 
announcement that Dr. Crocus would that evening deliver a 
lecture on Phrenology for the benefit of the Belleville public ; 
at a charge, for admission, of so much a head. 

Straying up stairs, during the preparation of the chicken- 
fixings, I happened to pass the Doctor's chamber ; and as the 
door stood wide open, and the room was empty, I made bold to 
peep in. 

It was a bare, unfurnished, comfortless room, with an un 
framed portrait hanging up at the head of the bed ; a likeness, 



LOOKING-GLASS PRAIRIE AND BACK. 



229 



I take it, of the Doctor, for the forehead was folly displayed, 
and great stress was laid by the artist upon its phrenological 
developments. The bed itself was covered with an old patch- 
work counterpane. The room was destitute of carpet or of 
curtain. There was a damp fire-place without any stove, full 
of wood ashes ; a chair, and a very small table ; and on the last- 
named piece of furniture was displayed, in grand array, the 
doctor's library consisting of some half-dozen greasy old books. 

Now, it certainly looked about the last apartment on the 
whole earth out of which any man would be likely to get any- 
thing to do him good. But the door, as I have said, stood coax- 
ingly open, and plainly said in conjunction with the chair, the 
portrait, the table, and the books, " Walk in, gentlemen, walk 
in ! Don't be ill, gentlemen, when you may be well in no time. 
Doctor Crocus is here, gentlemen, the celebrated Doctor Crocus ! 
Doctor Crocus has come all this way to cure you, gentlemen. 
If you haven't heard of Doctor Crocus, it's your fault, gentle- 
men who live a little way out of the world here : not Doctor 
Crocus's. Walk in, gentlemen, walk in ! " 

In the passage below, when I went down stairs again, was 
Doctor Crocus himself. A crowd had flocked in from the Court 
House, and a voice from among them called out to the land- 
lord, " Colonel! introduce Doctor Crocus. " 

" Mr Dickens," says the colonel, " Doctor Crocus." 

Upon which Doctor Crocus, who is a tall, fine-looking 
Scotchman, but rather fierce and warlike in appearance for a 
professor of the peaceful art of healing, bursts out of the con- 
course with his right arm extended, and his chest thrown 
out as far as it will possibly come, and says : 

" Your countryman, sir ! ; ' 

Whereupon Doctor Crocus and I shake hands ; and Doctor 
Crocus looks as if I didn't by any means realize his expectations, 
which, in a linen blouse, and a great straw hat with a green 
ribbon, and no gloves, and my face and nose profusely orna- 
mented with the stings of mosquitoes and the bites of bugs, it is 
very likely I did not. 

u Long in these parts, sir? " says I. 



A JAUNT TO THE 



u Three or four months, sir," says the Doctor. 
" Do you think of soon returning to the old country, sir?" 
says I. 

Doctor Crocus makes no verbal answer, but gives me an im- 
ploring look, which says so plainly 1 Will you ask me that again, 
a little louder, if you please? ' that I repeat the question. 

" Think of soon returning to the old country, sir! " repeats 
the Doctor. 

u To the old country, sir," I rejoin. 

Doctor Crocus looks round upon the crowd to observe the 
effect he produces, rubs his hands, and says, in a very loud 
voice : 

" Not yet awhile, sir, not yet. You won't catch me at 
that just yet, sir. I am a little too fond of freedom fort that, sir. 
Ha ha ! It's not so easy for a man to tear himself from a free 
country such as this is, sir. Ha ha ! No no! Ha ha ! None 
of that, till one's obliged to do it, sir. No, no ! " 

As Doctor Crocus says these latter words, he shakes his head, 
knowingly, and laughs again. Many of the by-standers shake 
their heads in concert with the doctor, and laugh too, and look 
at each other as much as to say, ' A pretty bright and first-rate 
sort of chap is Crocus! ■ and unless I am very much mistaken, 
a good many people went to the lecture that night, who never 
thought about phrenology, or about Doctor Crocus either, in 
all their lives before. 

From Belleville, we went on, through the same desolate kind 
of waste, and constantly attended, without the interval of a 
moment, by the same music; until, at three o'clock in the after- 
noon, we halted once more at a village called Lebanon to inflate 
the horses again, and give them some corn besides : of which 
they stood much in need. Pending this ceremony, I walked into 
the village, where I met a full-sized dwelling-house coming 
down-hill at a round trot, drawn by a score or more of oxen. 

The public-house was so very clean and good a one, that the 
managers of the jaunt resolved to return to it and put up there 
for the night, if possible. This course decided on, and the 



LOOKING-GLASS PRAIRIE AND BACK. 



horses being well refreshed, we again pushed forward, and came 
upon the Prairie at sunset. 

it would be difficult to say why, or how— though it was 
possibly from having heard and read so much about it — but the 
effect on me was disappointment. Looking towards the set- 
ting sun, there lay, stretched out before my view, a vast 
expanse of level ground} unbroken, save by one thin line of 
trees, which scarcely amounted to a scratch upon the great 
blank; until it met the glowing sky, wherein it seemed to dip : 
mingling with its rich colours, and mellowing in its distant 
blue. There it lay, a tranquil sea or lake without water, if 
such a simile be admissible, with the day going down upon it : 
a few birds wheeling here and there : and solitude and silence 
reigning paramount around. But the grass was not yet high ; 
there were bare black patches on the ground ; and the few wild 
flowers that the eye could see, were poor and scanty. Great 
as the picture was, its very flatness and extent, which left 
nothing to the imagination, tamed it down and cramped its 
interest. I felt little of that sense of freedom and exhilaration 
which a Scottish heath inspires, or even our English downs 
avaken. It was lonely and wild, but oppressive in its barren 
monotony. I felt that in traversing the Prairies I could never 
abandon myself to the scene, forgetful of all else \ as I should do 
instinctively, were the heather underneath my feet, or an iron- 
bound coast beyond ; but should often glance towards the dis- 
tant and frequently-receding line of the horizon, and wish it 
gained aud passed. It is not a scene to be forgotten, but it is 
scarcely one, I think (at all events, as I saw it), to remember 
with much pleasure, or to covet the looking-on again, in after 
life. 

We encamped near a solitary log-house, for the sake of its 
water, and dined upon the plain. The baskets contained roast 
fowls, buffalo's tongue (an exquisite dainty, by the way), ham, 
bread, cheese, and butter; biscuits, champagne, sherry; 
lemons and sugar for punch ; and abundance of rough ice. 
The meal was delicious, aud the entertainers were the soul of 
kiudness and good humour. I have often recalied^that cheer- 



A .TAI NT TO THE 



ful party to my pleasant recollection since, and shall not easily 
forget, in junketings nearer home with friends of older date, 
my boon companions on the Prairie. 

Returning to Lebanon that night, we lay at the little inn at 
which we had halted in the afternoon. In point of cleanliness 
and comfort it would have suffered by no comparison with any 
village ale-house, of a homely kind, in England. 

Rising at five o'clock next morning, I took a walk about the 
village : none of the houses were strolling about to-day, but it 
was early for them yet, perhaps : and then amused myself by 
lounging in a kind of farm-yard behind the tavern, of which 
the leading features were, a strange jumble of rough sheds for 
stables; a rude colonnade, built as a cool place of summer 
resort ; a deep well ; a great earthen mound for keeping vege- 
tables in, in winter time ; and a pigeon-house, whose little 
apertures looked, as they do in all pigeon-houses, very much 
too small for the admission of the plump and swelling-breasted 
birds who were strutting about it, though they tried to get in 
never so hard. That interest exhausted, I took a survey of 
the inn's two parlours, which were decorated with coloured 
prints of Washington, and President Madison, and of a white- 
faced young lady (much speckled by the flies), who held up her 
gold neck-chain for the admiration of the spectator, and in- 
formed all admiring comers that she was " Just Seventeen " : 
although I should have thought her older. In the best room 
were two oil portraits of the kit-cat size , representing the land- 
lord and his infant son ; both looking as bold as lions, and star- 
ing out of the canvas with an intensity that would have been 
cheap at any price. They were painted, I think, by the artist 
who had touched up the Belleville doors with red and gold , 
for I seemed to recognise his style immediately. 

After breakfast, we started to return by a different way from 
that which we had taken yesterday, and coming up at ten o'clock 
with an encampment of German emigrants carrying their goods 
in carts, who had made a rousing fire which they were just 
quitting, stopped there to refresh. And very pleasant the fire 
was ; for, hot though it had been yesterday, it was quite cold 



LOOKING-GLASS PRAIRIE AND RACK. 233 



to-day, and the wind blew keenly. Looming in the distance, 
as we rode along, was another of the ancient Indian burial- 
places, called The Monks' Mound: in memory of a body of 
fanatics of the order of La Trappe, who founded a desolate con- 
vent there, many years ago, when there were no settlers within 
a thousand miles, and were all swept off by the pernicious cli- 
mate : in which lamentable fatality, few rational people will 
suppose, perhaps, that society experienced any very severe 
deprivation. 

The track of to-day had the same features as the track of 
yesterday. There was the swamp, the bush, the perpetual 
chorus of frogs, the rank unseemly growth, the unwholesome 
steaming earth. Here and there, and frequently too, we en- 
countered a solitary broken-down waggon, full of some new 
settler's goods. It was a pitiful sight to see one of these vehicles 
deep in the mire ; the axletree broken ; a wheel lying idly by 
its side ; the man gone miles away, to look for assistance ; the 
woman seated among their wandering household goods with a 
baby at her breast, a picture of forlorn, dejected patience; the 
team of oxen crouching down mournfully in the mud, and 
breathing forth such clouds of vapour from their mouths and 
nostrils, that all the damp mist and fog around seemed to have 
come direct from them. 

In due time we mustered once again before the merchant 
tailor's, and having done so, crossed over to the city in the 
ferry-boat : passing, on the way, a spot called Bloody Island, 
the duelling-ground of St. Louis, and so designated in honour 
of the last fatal combat fought there, which was with pistols, 
breast to breast. Both combatants fell dead upon the ground ; 
and possibly some rational people may think of them, as of 
the gloomy madmen on the Monks' Mound, that they were no 
great loss to the community. 



THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 



CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH. 



BETURN TO CINCINNATI. A STAGE-COACH RIDE FROM THAT CITY TO 
COLUMBUS, AND THENCE TO SANDUSKY. SO, BY LAKE ERIE, TO THE 
FALLS OF NIAGARA. 

As I had a desire to travel through the interior of the state 
of Ohio, and to " strike the lakes,'' as the phrase is, at a small 
town called Sandusky, to which that route would conduct us 
on our way to Niagara, we had to return from St. Louis by 
the way we had come, and to retrace our former track as far as 
Cincinnati. 

The day on which we were to take leave of St. Louis being 
very One ; and the steamboat, which was to have started I don't 
know how early in the morning, postponing, for the third or 
fourth time, her departure until the afternoon ; werode forward 
to an old French village on the river, called properly Caron- 
delet, and nicknamed Vide Poche, and arranged that the packet 
should call for us there. 

The place consisted of a few poor cottages, and two or three 
public-houses ; the state of whose larders certainly seemed to 
justify the second designation of the village, for there was 
nothing to eat in any of them. At length, however, by going 
back some half a mile or so, we found a solitary house where 
ham and coffee were procurable ; and there we tarried to await 
the advent of the boat, which would come in sight from the 
green before the door, a long way off. 

it was a neat, unpretending village tavern, and we look our 
repast in a quaint littie room with a bed in it, decorated with 
some old oil paintings, which in their time had probably done 



RETURN TO 



dufy in a Catholic chapel or monastery. The fare was very 
good, and served with great cleanliness. The house was kept 
by a characteristic old couple, with whom we had a long talk, 
and who were perhaps a very good sample of that kind of people 
in the West. 

The landlord was a dry, tough, hard-faced old fellow (not so 
very old either, for he was but just turned sixty, I should think), 
who had been out with the militia in the last war with England, 
and had seen all kinds of service, — except a battle ; and he had 
been very near seeing that, he added : very near. He had all his 
life been restless and locomotive, with an irresistible desire for 
change ; and w as still the son of his old self : for if he had no- 
thing to keep him at home, he said (slightly jerking his hat and 
his thumb towards the window ot the room in which the old lady 
sat, as we stood talking in front of the house) he would clean 
up his musket, and be off to Texas to-morrow morning. He 
w as one of the very many descendants of Cain proper to this 
continent, who seem destined from their birth to serve as pio- 
neers in the great human army 5 who gladly go on from year to 
year extending its outposts, and leaving home after home behind 
them ; and die at last, utterly regardless of their graves being 
left thousands of miles behind, by the w andering generation 
who succeed. 

His wife was a domesticated kind-hearted old soul, who had 
come with him u from the queen city of the world," which, it 
seemed, was Philadelphia ; but had no love for this Western 
country, and indeed had little reason to bear it any ; having 
seen her children, one by one, die here of fever, in the full pri- 
me and beauty of their youth. Her heart w r as sore, she s said, 
to think of them ; and to talk on this theme, even to strangers, 
in that blighted place, so far from her old home, eased it some- 
what, and became a;melancholy pleasure. 

The boat appearing towards evening, we bade adieu to the 
poor old lady and her vagrant spouse, and making for the near- 
est landing-place, were soon on board The Messenger again, 
in our old cabin, and steaming down the Mississippi. 

Jf the coming up this river, slowly making head against the 



CLNCLNNATI. 



stream, be an irksome journey, the shooting down it with the 
turbid current is almost worse ; for then the boat, proceeding 
at the rate of twelve or fifteen miles an hour, has to force 
its passage through a labyrinth of floating logs, which, in the 
dark, it is often impossible to see beforehand or avoid. All 
that night, the bell was never silent for five minutes at a time ; 
and after every ring the vessel reeled again, sometimes beneath 
a single blow, sometimes beneath a dozen dealt in quick suc- 
cession, the lightest of which seemed more than enough to beat 
in her frail keel, as though it had been pie-crust. Looking 
down upon the filthy river after dark, it seemed to be alive 
with monsters, as these black masses rolled upon the surface, 
or came starting up again, head first, w hen the boat, in plough- 
ing her way among a shoal of such obstructions, drove a few 
among them for the moment under water. Sometimes, the en- 
gine stopped during a long interval, and then before her and 
behind, and gathering close about her on all sides, were so many 
of these ill-favoured obstacles that she was fairly hemmed in j 
the centre of a floating island ; and was constrained to pause 
until they parted somewhere, as dark clouds w ill do before the 
wind, and opened by degrees a channel out. 

In good time next morning, however, we came againin sight 
of the detestable morass called Cairo; and stopping there, to 
take in wood, lay alongside a barge, whose starling timbers 
scarcely held together. It was moored to the bank, and on its 
side was painted, " Coffee House; " that being, I suppose, the 
floating paradise to which the people fly for shelter when they 
lose their houses for a month or two beneath the hideous wa- 
ters of the Mississippi. But looking southward from this point, 
we had the satisfaction of seeing that intolerable river dragging 
its slimy length and ugly freight abruptly off towards New Or- 
leans ; and passing a yellow line which stretched across the cur 
rent, were again upon the clear Ohio, never, I trust, to see the 
Mississippi more, saving in troubled dreams and nightmares. 
Leaving it for the company of its sparkling neighbour, was like 
the transition from pain to ease, or the awakening from a hor- 
rible vision to cheerful realities. 



240 



STAGE-COACH RIDE 



We arrived at Louisville on the fourth night, and gladly availed 
ourselves of its excellent hotel. Next day, we went on in the 
Ben Franklin, a beautiful mail steamboat, and reached Cin- 
cinnati shortly after midnight. Being by this time nearly 
tired of sleeping upon shelves, we had remained awake, to 
go ashore straightway 5 and groping a passage across the dark 
decks of other boats, and among labyrinths of engine-ma- 
chinery and leaking casks of molasses, we reached the streets, 
knocked up the porter at the hotel where we had staid be- 
fore, and were ? to our great joy, safely housed soon after- 
wards. 

We rested but one day at Cincinnati, and then resumed our 
journey to Sandusky. As it comprised two varieties of stage- 
coach travelling, which, with those I have already glanced at, 
comprehend the main characteristics of this* mode of transit 
in America, I will take the reader as our fellow-passenger, 
and pledge myself to perform the distance with all possible 
despatch. 

Our place of destination in the first instance is Columbus. It 
is distant about a hundred and twenty miles from Cincinnati, 
but there is a macadamised road ( rare blessing ! ) the 
whole way, and the rate of travelling upon it is six miles an 
hour. 

We start at eight o'clock in the morning, in a great mail- 
coach, whose huge cheeks are so very ruddy and plethoric, 
that it appears to be troubled with a tendency of blood to the 
head. Dropsical it certainly is, for it will hold a dozen pas- 
sengers inside. But, wonderful to add, it is very clean and 
bright, being nearly new; and rattles through the streets of 
Cincinnati gaily. 

Our way lies through a beautiful country, richly cultivated, 
and luxuriant in its promise of an abundant harvest. Some- 
times we pass a field where the strong bristling stalks of Indian 
corn look like a crop of walking-sticks, and sometimes an 
enclosure where the green wheat is springing up among a 
labyrinth of stumps; the primitive worm-fence is universal, 
and an ugly thing it is; but the farms are neatly kept, 



TO COLUMBUS. 



241 



tnd, save for these differences, one might be travelling just 
now in Kent. 

We often stop to water at a roadside inn, which is always dull 
and silent. The coachman dismounts and fills his bucket, and 
holds it to the horses' heads. There is scarcely ever any one to 
help him ; there are seldom any loungers standing round; and 
never any stable-company with jokes to crack. Sometimes, 
when we have changed our team, there is a difficulty in starting 
again, arising out of the prevalent mode of breaking a young 
horse : which is to catch him, harness him against his will, 
and put him in a stage-coach without farther notice : but we 
get on somehow or other, after a great many kicks and a 
▼iolent struggle ; and jog on as before again. 

Occasionally, when we stop to change, some two or three 
half -drunken loafers will come loi luring out with their hands 
in their pockets, or will be seen kicking their heels in rocking- 
chairs, or lounging on the window sill, or sitting on a rail 
within the colonnade : they have not often anything to say 
though, either to us or to each other, but sit there, idly staring 
at the coach and horses. The landlord of the inn is usually 
among them, and seems, of all the party, to be the least con- 
nected with the business of the house. Indeed he is with 
reference to the tavern, what the driver is in relation to the 
coach and passengers : whatever happens in his sphere of 
action, he is quite indifferent, and perfectly easy in his mind- 

The frequent change of coachmen works no change or 
variety in the coachman's character. He is always dirty, sullen, 
and taciturn. If he be capable of smartness of any kind, 
moral or physical, he has a faculty of concealing it which is 
truly marvellous. He never speaks to you as you sit beside 
him on the box, and if you speak to him, he answers ( if at 
all) in monosyllables. He points out nothing on the road, and 
seldom looks at anything: being, to all appearance, thoroughly 
weary of it, and of existence generally. As to doing the honours 
of his coach, his business, as I have said, is with the horses. 
The coach follows because it is attached to them and goes on 
wheels : not because }Ou are in it. Sometimes, towards the 

16 



242 



STAGE-COACH RIDE 



end of a long stage, he suddenly breaks out into a discordant 
fragment of an election song, but his face never sings along 
with him ; it is only his voice, and not often that. 

He always chews and always spits, and never encumbers 
himself with a pocket-handkerchief. The consequences to the 
box passenger, especially when the wind blows towards him, 
are not agreeable. 

Whenever the coach stops, and you can hear the voices of the 
inside passengers; or whenever any bystander addresses them, or 
any one among them ; or they address each other ; you will hear 
one phrase repeated over and over and over again to the most 
extraordinary extent. Itis an ordinary and unpromising phrase 
enough, being neither more nor less than "Yes, sir;" but it is 
adapted to every variety of circumstance, and fills up every 
pause in the conversation. Thus : 

The time is one o'clock at noon. The scene, a place where 
we are to stay to dine, on this journey. The coach drives up 
to the door of an inn. The day is warm, and there are several 
idlers lingering about the tavern, and waiting for the public 
dinner. Among them, is a stout gentleman in a brown hat, 
swinging himself to and fro in a rocking-chair on the pavement. 

As the coach stops, a gentleman in a straw hat, looks out of 
the window : 

Straw Hat. (To the stout gentleman in the rocking-chair.) 
I reckon that's Judge Jefferson, a'nt it ? 

Brown Hat. (Still swinging; speaking very slowly; and 
without any emotion whatever.) Yes, sir. 

Straw Hat. Warm weather, Judge. 

Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 

Straw Hat. There was a snap of cold, last week. 
Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 
Straw Hat. Yes, sir. 

A pause. They look at each other very seriously. 
Straw Hat. I calculate you'll have got through that case of 
the corporation judge, by this time, now? 
Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 
Straw Hat. How did the verdict go, sir ? 



TO COLUMBUS. 



243 



Brown Hat. For the defendant, sir. 

Straw Hat. (Interrogatively.) Yes, sir ? 

Brown Hat. (Affirmatively.) Yes, sir. 

Both. (Musingly, as each gazes down the street.) Yes, sir. 

Another pause. They look at each other again, still more 
seriously than before. 

Brown Hat. This coach is rather behind its time to-day, I 
guess. 

Straw Hat. (Doubtingly.) Yes, sir. 
Brown Hat. (Looking at his watch.) Yes, sir ; nigh upon 
two hours. 

Straw Hat. (Raising his eyebrows in very great surprise.) 
Yes, sir. 

Brown Hat. (Decisively, as he puts up his watch.) Yes, sir. 
All the other inside Passengers ( among themselves ). Y 7 es, 
sir. 

Coachman (in a very surly tone). No it ant. 

Straw Hat (to the coachman). Well, I don't know, sir. We 
were a pretty tall time coming that last fifteen mile. That's a 
fact. 

The coachman making no reply, and plainly declining to enter 
into any controversy on a subject so far removed from his sym- 
pathies and feelings, another passenger says "Yes, sir;" and 
the gentleman in the straw hat in acknowledgment of his courtesy 
says u Yes, sir" to him, in return. The straw hat then inquires 
of the brown hat, whether that coach in which he (the straw hat) 
then sits, is not a new one? To which the brown hat again 
makes answer, "Yes, sir." 

Straw Hat. I thought so. Pretty loud smell of varnish, sir? 

Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 

All the other inside Passengers. Yes,, sir. 

Brown Hat (to the company in general). Yes, sir. 

The conversational powers of the company having been by 
this time pretty heavily taxed, the straw hat opens the door 
and gets out; and all the rest alight also. We dine soon 
afterwards with the boarders in the house, and have nothing 
to drink but tea and coffee. As they are both very bad and the 



2a 



STAGE-COACH RIDE 



-water is worse, I ask for brandy ; but it is a Temperance Hotel, 
and spirits are not to be had for love or money. This prepos- 
terous forcing of unpleasant drinks down the reluctant throats 
of travellers is not at all uncommon in America, but I never 
discovered that the scruples of such wincing landlords induced 
them to preserve any unusually nice balance between the qua- 
lity of their fare, and their scale of charges : on the contrary, I 
rather suspected them of diminishing the one and exalting the 
other, by way of recompense for the loss of their profit on the 
sale of spirituous liquors. After all, perhaps, the plainest 
course for persons of such tender consciences, would be, a total 
abstinence from tavern-keeping. 

Dinner over, we get into another vehicle which is ready at 
the door (for the coach has been changed in the interval) , and 
resume our journey ; w hich continues through the same kind 
of country unlil evening, when w T e come to the tow T n where we 
are to stop for tea and supper; and having delivered the mail 
bags at Hie Post-office, ride through the usual wide street, lined 
with the usual stores and houses (the drapers always having 
hung up at their door, by way of sign, a piece of bright red 
cloth), to the hotel where this meal is prepared. There being 
many boarders here, w 7 e sit down, a large party, and a very 
melancholy one as usual. But there is a buxom hostess at the 
head of the table, and opposite, a simple Welsh schoolmaster 
with his wife and child , who came here, on a speculation of 
greater promise than performance, to teach the classics : and 
they are sufficient subjects of interest until the meal is over, 
and another coach is ready. In it w r e go on once more, lighted 
by a bright moon, until midnight ; when we stop to change the 
coach again, and remain for half an hour or so in a miserable 
room, with a blurred lithograph of Washington over the 
smoky fireplace, and a mighty jug of cold water on the table : 
to which refreshment the moody passengers do so apply them- 
selves that they would seem to be, one and all, keen patients of 
Doctor Sangrado. Among them is a very little boy, who chews 
tobacco like a very big one, and a droning gentleman, who 
talks arithmetically and statistically on all subjects, from poetry 



TO COLUMBUS. 



245 



downwards ; and who always speaks in the same key, with 
exactly the same emphasis, and with very grave deliberation. 
He came outside just now, and told me how that the uncle of a 
certain young lady who had been spirited away and married by 
a certain captain, lived in these parts; and how this uncle was 
so valiant and ferocious that he shouldn't wonder if he were to 
follow the said captain to England, " and shoot him down in 
the street, w herever he found him ; " in the feasibility of w hich 
strong measure I, being for the moment rather prone to 
contradiction, from feeling half asleep and very tired, declined 
to acquiesce : assuring him that if the uncle did resort to it, or 
gratified any other little whim of the like nature, he would find 
himself one morning prematurely throttled at the Old Bailey; 
and that he would do well to make his w ill before he went, as he 
would certainly want it before he had been in Britain very long. 

On we go, all night, and bye and bye the day begins to break, 
and presently the first cheerful rays of the warm sum come 
slanting on us brightly. It sheds its light upon a miserable waste 
of sodden grass, and dull trees, and squalid huts, whose aspect 
is forlorn and grievous in the last degree. A very desert in the 
wood, whose growth of green is dank and noxious like that upon 
the top of standing water \ where poisonous fungus grows in 
the rare footprint on the oozy ground, and sprouts like w itches' 
coral, from the crevices in the cabin wall and floor ; it is a 
hideous thing to lie upon the very threshold of a city. But it was 
purchased years ago, and as the owner cannot be discovered, 
the State has been unable to reclaim it. So there it remains 
in the midst of cultivation and improvement, like ground ac- 
cursed, and made obscene and rank by some great crime. 

We reached Columbus shortly before seven o'clock, and 
staid there, to refresh, that day and night : having excellent 
apartments in a very large unfinished hotel called the Neill 
House, which were richly fitted with the polished wood of the 
black walnut, and opened on a handsome portico and stone 
verandah, like rooms in some Italian mansion. The town is 
clean and pretty, and of course is 14 going to be" much 
larger. It is the seat of the State legislature of Ohio, and lays 
claim, in consequence, to some consideration and importance. 



246 



COLUMBUS TO 



There being no stage-coach next day, upon the road we 
wished to take, I hired "an extra," at a reasonable charge, to 
carry us to Tiffin ; a small town from whence there is a railroad 
to Sandusky. This extra was an ordinary four-horse stage- 
coach, such as I have described, changing horses and drivers, 
as the stage-coach would, but was exclusively our own for the 
journey. To ensure our having horses at the proper stations, 
and being incommoded by no strangers, the proprietors sent an 
agent on the box,, who was to accompany us the whole way 
through: and thus attended, and bearing with us, besides, a 
hamper full of savoury cold meats, and fruit, and wine : we 
started off again, in high spirits, at half-past six o'clock next 
morning, very much delighted to be by ourselves, and disposed 
to enjoy even the roughest journey. 

It was well for us, that we were in this humour, for the road 
we went over that day, was certainly enough to have shaken 
tempers that were not resolutely a Set Fair, down to some 
inches below Stormy. At one time we were all flung together 
in a heap at the bottom of the coach, and at another we were 
crushing our heads against the roof. Now, one side was down 
deep In the mire, and we were holding on to the other. Now, 
the coach was lying on the tails of the two wheelers; and now 
it was rearing up in the air, in a frantic state, with all four 
horses standing on the top of an insurmountable eminence, 
looking coolly back at it, as though they would say, u Un- 
harness us. It can't be done." The drivers on these roads, 
who certainly get over the ground in a manner which is quite 
miraculous , so twist and turn the team about in forcing a pas- 
sage, corkscrew fashion, through the bogs and swamps, that it 
was quite a common circumstance on looking out of the window, 
to see the coachman with the ends of a pair of reins in his 
hands, apparently driving nothing, or playing at horses, and 
the leaders staring at one unexpectedly from the back of the 
coach, as if they had some idea of getting up behind. A great 
portion of the way was over what is called a corduroy road, 
which is made by throwing trunks of trees into a marsh, and 
leaving them to settle there. The very slightest of the jolts with 
which the ponderous carriage fell from log to log, was enough, 



SANDUSKY. 



247 



it seemed, to have dislocated all the bones in the human body. 
It would be impossible to experience a similar set of sensations, 
in any other circumstances, unless perhaps in attempting to go 
up to the top of Saint Paul's in an omnibus. Never, never 
once, that day, was the coach in any position, attitude, or kind 
of motion to which we are accustomed in coaches. Never did it 
make the smallest approach to one's experience of the proceed- 
ings of any sort of vehicle that goes on wheels. 

Still, it was a fine day, and the temperature was delicious, 
and though we had left Summer behind us in the west, and 
were fast leaving Spring, we were moving towards Niagara, 
and home. We alighted in a pleasant wood towards the middle 
of the day, dined on a fallen tree, and leaving our best frag- 
ments with a cottager, and our worst with the pigs (who swarm 
in this part of the country like grains of sand on the sea-shore, 
to the great comfort of our commissariat in Canada), we went 
forward again, gaily. 

As night came on, the track grew narrower and narrower, 
until at last it so lost itself among the trees, that the driver 
seemed to find his way by instinct. We had the comfort of 
knowing, at least, that there was no danger of his falling 
asleep, for every now and then a wheel would strike against an 
unseen stump with such a jerk, that he was fain to hold on 
pretty tight and pretty quick, to keep himself upon the box. 
Nor was there any reason to dread the least danger from furious 
driving, inasmuch as over that broken ground the horses had 
enough to do walk ; as to shying, there was no room for that ; 
and a herd of wild elephants could not have run away in such a 
wood, with such a coach at their heels. So we stumbled along, 
quite satisfied. 

These slumps of trees are a curious feature in American tra- 
velling. The varying illusions they present to the unaccus- 
tomed eye as it grows dark, are quite astonishing in their num- 
ber and reality. Now, there is a Grecian urn erected in the 
centre of a lonely field ; now there is a woman weeping at a 
tomb; now a very common-place old gentleman in a white 
waistcoat, with a thumb thrust into each arm-hole of his coat; 
now a student poring on a book ; now a crouching negro ; now, 



248 



COLUMBUS TO 



a horse, a dog-, a cannon, an armed man ; a hunchback throw- 
ing oil* his cloak and stepping forth into the light. They were 
often as entertaining to me as so many glasses in a magic lan- 
tern, and never took their shapes at my bidding, but seemed to 
force themselves upon me, whether I would or no; and strange 
to say, 1 sometimes recognised in them, counterparts of Ggures 
once familiar to me in pictures attached to childish books, for- 
got (en long ago. 

It soon became too dark, however, even for this amusement, 
and the trees were so close together that their dry branches 
rattled against the coach on either side, and obliged us all to 
keep our heads w ithin. It lightened too, for three whole hours ; 
each flash being very bright, and blue, and long ; and as the 
vivid streaks came darting in among the crowded branches, and 
the thunder rolled gloomily above the three tops, one could 
scarcely help thinking that there were better neighbourhoods 
at such a time than thick woods afforded. 

At length, between ten and eleven o'clock at night, a few 
feeble lights appeared in the distance, and Upper Sandusky, an 
Indian village, where we were to stay till morning, lay be- 
fore us. 

They were gone to bed at the log Inn, which was the only 
house of entertainment in the place, but soon answered to our 
knocking, and got some tea for us in a sort of kitchen or com- 
mon room, tapestried with old newspapers, pasted against the 
wall. The bed-chamber to which my wife and I were shown, 
was a large, low, ghostly room ; w 7 ith a quantity of withered 
branches on the hearth, and two doors without any fastening, 
opposite to each other, both opening on the black night and 
w ild country, and so contrived, that one of them always blew 
the other open : a novelty in domestic architecture, which I do 
not remember to have seen before, and w hich I was somew hat 
disconcerted to have forced on my attention af ter getting into 
bed, as I had a considerable sum in gold for our travelling ex- 
penses, in my dressing-case. Some of the luggage, however, 
piled against the pannels, soon settled this difficulty, and my 
sleep w ould not have been very much affected that night, I be- 
lieve, hough it had failed to do so. 



SANDUSKY. 



My Boston friend climbed up to bed, somewhere in the roof, 
where another guest was already snoring hugely. But being 
bitten beyond his power of endurance, he turned out again, 
and fled for shelter to the coach, which w as airing itself in front 
of the house. This was not a very politic step, as it turned 
out; for the pigs scenting him, and looking upon the coach as a 
kind of pie with some manner of meat inside, grunted round it 
so hideously, that he was afraid to come out again, and lay there 
shivering, till morning. Nor was it possible to warm him, 
w hen he did come out, by means of a glass of brandy ; for in In- 
dian villages, the legislature, with a very good and wise inten- 
tion, forbids the sale of spirits by tavern keepers. The precau- 
tion, however, is quite inefficacious, for the Indians never fail 
to procure liquor of a worse kind, at a dearer price, from tra- 
velling pedlars. 

It is a settlement of the Wyandot Indians who inhabit this 
place. Among the company at breakfast was a mild old gentle- 
man, who had been for many years employed by the United 
States Government in conducting negotiations with the Indians, 
and who had just concluded a treaty with these people by 
which they bound themselves, in consideration of a certain an- 
nual sum, to remove next year to some land provided for them, 
west of the Mississipi, and a little way beyond St. Louis. He 
gave me a moving account of their strong attachment to the 
familiar scenes of their infancy, and in particular to the burial- 
places of their kindred ; and of their great reluctance to leave 
them. He had w itnessed many such removals, and always with 
pain, though he knew that they departed for their own good. 
The question w hether this tribe should go or stay, had been 
discussed among them a day or two before, in a hut erected for 
the purpose, the logs of w hich still lay upon the ground before 
the inn. When the speaking was done, the ayes and noes w ere 
ranged on opposite sides, and every male adult voted in his turn. 
The moment the result was known, the minority fa large one) 
cheerfully yielded to the rest, and withdrew all kind of oppo- 
sition. 

AV e met some of these poor Indians afterwards, riding on 
sha ?oy ponies. They were so like gipsies, that if I could have 



250 [COLUMBUS TO SANDUSKY. 

seen any of them in England, I should have concluded, as a 
matter of course, that they belonged to that wandering and 
restless people. 

Leaving this town directly after breakfast, we pushed for- 
ward again, over a rather worse road than yesterday, if possible, 
and arrived about noon at Tiffin, where we parted with the 
extra. At two o'clock, we took the railroad ; the travelling on 
which was very slow, its construction being indifferent, and 
the ground wet and marshy ; and arrived at Sandusky in time 
to dine that evening. We put up at a comfortable little hotel 
on the brink of Lake Erie, lay there that night, and had no 
choice but to wait there next day, until a steamboat bound for 
Buffalo appeared. The town, which was sluggish and unin- 
teresting enough, was something like the back of an English 
watering-place, out of the season. 

Our host, who was very attentive and anxious to make us 
comfortable, was a handsome middle-aged man, who had come 
to this town from New England, in which part of the country 
he was u raised." When I say that he constantly walked in 
and out of the room with his hat on ; and stopped to converse 
in the same free-and-easy state; and lay down on our sofa, and 
pulled his newspaper out of his pocket, and read it at his ease; 
I merely mention these traits as characteristic of the country : 
not at all as being matter of complaint, or as having been dis- 
agreeable to me. I should undoubtedly be offended by such 
proceedings at home, because there they are not the custom, 
and where they are not, they would be impertinencies ; but in 
America, the only desire of a good-natured fellow of this kind, 
is to treat his guests hospitably and well ; and I had no more 
right, and I can truly say no more disposition, to measure his 
conduct by our English rule and standard, than I had to quar- 
rel with him for not being of the exact stature which would 
qualify him for admission into tkc Queen's grenadier guards. 
As little inclination had I to find fault with a funny old lady 
who was an upper domestic in this establishment, and who, 
w hen she came to wait upon us at any meal, sat herself down 
comfortably in the most convenient chair, and producing 
a large pin to pick her teeth with, remained performing that 



SANDUSKY TO BUFFALO. 



251 



ceremony, and steadfastly regarding us meanwhile with 
much gravity and composure, (now and then pressing us to 
eat a little more), until it was time to clear away. It was 
enough for us, that whatever we w ished done was done with 
great civility and readiness, and a desire to oblige, not only 
here, but everywhere else ; and that all our wants were, in 
general, zealously anticipated. 

We w ere taking an early dinner at this house, on the day 
after our arrival, which was Sunday, when a steamboat came 
in sight, and presently touched at the wharf. As she proved 
to be on her way to Buffalo, we hurried on board with all speed, 
and soon left Sandusky far behind us. 

She w as a targe vessel of Gve hundred tons, and handsomely 
fitted up, though with high-pressure engines; which always 
conveyed that kind of feeling to me, which I should be likely to 
experience, I think, if I had lodgings on the first floor of a 
pow der-mill. She w as laden with flour, some casks of which 
commodity were stored upon the deck. The captain coming 
up to have a little conversation, and to introduce a friend, scaled 
himself astride of one of these barrels, like a Bacchus of pri- 
vate life; and pulling a great clasp-knife out of his pocket, 
began to "whittle" it as he talked, by paring thin slices off the 
edges. And he whittled with such industry and hearty good 
will, that but for his being called away very soon, it must have 
disappeared bodily, and left nothing in its place but grist and 
shavings. 

After calling at one or two flat places, with low dams 
stretching out into the lake, whereon were stumpy lighthouses, 
like windmills without sails, the whole looking like a Dutch 
vignette, we came at midnight to Cleveland, where we lay all 
night, and until nine o'clock next morning 

I entertained quite a curiosity in reference to this place, from 
having seen at Sandusky a specimen of its literature in the 
shape of a newspaper, which w as very strong indeed upon the 
subject of Lord Ashburion's recent arrival at Washington, to 
adjust the points in dispute between the United Stales Govern- 
ment and Great Britain - informing its readers that as America 
had "whipped" England in her infancy, and whipped her 



25? 



SANDUSKY TO BUFFALO. 



again in her youth, so it was clearly necessary that she must 
whip her once again in her maturity ; and pledging its credit to 
all True Americans, that if Mr. Webster did his duty in the 
approaching negotiations, and sent the English Lord home 
again in double quick time, they should, within two years, 
"sing Yankee Doodle in Hyde Park, and Hail Columbia in the 
scarlet courts of Westminster" ! I found it a pretty town, and 
had the satisfaction of beholding the outside of the office of the 
journal from which I have just quoted. I did not enjoy the 
delight of seeing the wit who indited the paragraphs in ques- 
tion, but I have no doubt he is a prodigious man in his way, 
and held in high repute by a select circle. 

There was a gentleman on board, to whom, as I uninten- 
tionally learned through the thin partition which divided our 
state-room from the cabin in which he and his wife conversed 
together, I was unwittingly the occasion of very great uneasi- 
ness. I don't know why or wherefore, but I appeared to run 
in his mind perpetually, and to dissatisfy him very much. 
First of all I heard him say • and the most ludicrous part of 
the business was, that he said it in my very ear, and could not 
have communicated more directly with me, if he had leaned 
upon my shoulder, and whispered me: " Boz is on board still, 
my dear." After a considerable pause, he added complain- 
ingly, u Boz keeps himself very close which was true enough, 
for I was not very well, and was lying down, with a book. I 
thought he had done with me after this, but I was deceived; 
for a long interval having elapsed, during which I imagine 
him to have been turning restlessly from side to side, and 
trying to go to sleep ; he broke out again, with "I suppose 
that Boz w ill be writing a book bye and bye, and putting all 
our names in it ! " at which imaginary consequence of being on 
board a boat with Boz, he groaned, and became silent. 

We called at the town of Erie, at eight o'clock that night, 
and lay there an hour. Between five and six next morning, 
we arrived at Buffalo, w here we breakfasted ; and being too 
near the Great Falls to wait patiently anywhere else, we set 
off by the train, the same morning at nine o'clock, to Niagara. 
It was a miserable day ; chilly and raw ; a damp mist fall- 



THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 



253 



ing : and the trees in that northern region quite bare and 
wintry. Whenever the train hailed, I listened for the roar; 
and was constantly straining my eyes in the direction where I 
knew the Falls must be, from seeing the river rolling on 
towards them ; every moment expecting to behold the spray. 
Within a few minutes of our stopping, not before, I saw two 
great while clouds rising up slowly and majestically from the 
depths of the earth. That was all. At length we aligh'ed : 
and then lor the first time, I heard the mighty rush of water, 
and felt the ground tremble underneath my feet. 

The bank is very sleep, and was slippery with rain, and half- 
melted ice. I hardly know how I got down, but 1 was soon 
at the bottom, and climbing, with two English officers who were 
crossing and had joined me, over some broken rocks, deafened 
by the noise, half-blinded by the spray, and wet to the skin, 
We were at the foot of the American Fall. I could see an im- 
mense torrent of water tearing headlong down from soinc great 
height, but had no idea of shape, or situation, or anything but 
vague immensity. 

When we were seated in the little ferry-boat, and were cross- 
ing the swoln river immediately before both cataracts, I began 
to feel what it was : but I was in a manner stunned, and unable 
to comprehend the vaslness of the scene. It was not until I 
came on Table Rock, and looked — Great Heaven, on what a 
fall of bright-green water! — that it came upon me in its full 
might and majesty. 

Then, when I felt how 7 near to my Creator I was standing, 
the first effect, and the enduring one — instant and lasting — of 
the tremendous spectacle, was Peace. Peace of Mind Tran- 
quillity : Calm recollections of the Dead : Great Thoughts of 
Eternal Rest and Happiness • nothing of Gloom or Terror. 
Niagara was at once stamped upon my heart, an Image of 
Beauty; to remain there, changeless and indelible, until its 
pulses cease to beat, for ever. 

Oh, how the strife and trouble of our daily life receded from 
my view, and lessened in the distance, during the ten memorable 
days we passed on that Enchanted Ground ! What voices spoke 
from out the thundering water ; what faces, faded from the 



THE FALLS OF NIAGARA. 



earth, looked out upon me from its gleaming depths; what 
Heavenly promise glistened in those angel's tears, the drops of 
many hues, that showered around, and twined themselves about 
the gorgeous arches which the changing rainbows made ! 

1 never stiredin all that time from the Canadian side, whither 
I had gone at first. I never crossed the river again.- for I 
knew there were people on the other shore, and in soeh a 
place it is natural to shun strange company. To wander to 
and fro all day. and see the cataracts from all points of view: 
to stand upon the edge of the Great Horse Shoe Fall, marking 
the hurried water gathering strength as it approached the verge, 
jet seeming, too, to pause before it shot into the gulf below: to 
gaze from the river's level up at the torrent as it came streaming 
down ; to climb the neighbouring heights and watch it through 
the trees, and see the wreathing water in the rapids hurrying on 
to take its fearful plunge ; to linger in the shadow of the solemn 
rocks three miles below; watching the river as. stirred by no 
visible cause, it heaved and eddied and awoke the echoes, being 
troubled yet. far down beneath the surface, by its giant leap; 
to have Niagara before me, lighted by the sun and by the moon, 
red in the day's decline, a:;d grey as evening slowly fell upon 
it ; to look upon it every day. and wake up in the night and hear 
its ceaseless voice • this was enough. 

I think in every quiet season now. still do those waters roll 
and leap, and roar and tumble, all day long: still are the 
rainbows spanning them, a hundred feet below. Still, when 
the sun is on them, do they shine and glow like molten gold. 
Still, when the day is gloomy, do they fall like snow, or seem 
to crumble away like the front of a great chalk cliff, or roll 
adown the rock like dense white smoke. But always does the 
mighty stream appear to die as it comes down, and always from 
its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of spray 
and mist which is never laid s which has haunted this place with 
the same dread solemnity since Darkness brooded on the deep, 
and that first food befure the Deluge — Light — came rushing on 
Creation at the word of God. 



CANADA TO THE UNITED STATES. 



CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH. 



in caxada; top.onto ; kjngston ; Montreal; ouf.rec; st. John's, 
in the united states again j lebanon; the shaker village; 
and west point. 

I wish to abstain from instituting any comparison, or drawing 
any parallel whatever, between the social features of the United 
States and those of the British Possessions in Canada. For this 
reason, I shall confine myself to a very brief account of our 
journeyings in the latter territory. 

Lut before I leave Niagara, I must advert to one disgusting 
circumstance w hich can hardly have escaped the observation of 
any decent traveller who has visited the Falls. 

On table Bock, there is a cottage belonging to a Guide, 
where little relics of the place are sold, and where visitors re- 
gister their names in a book kept for the purpose. On the wall 
of the room in winch a great many of these volumes arc pre- 
served, the following request is posted : " Visitors will please 
not copy nor extract the remarks and poetical effusions from 
the registers and albums kept here." 

But for this intimation, I should have let them lie upon the 
tables on w hich they w ere strewn with careful negligence, like 
books in a drawing-room ■ being quite satisfied with the stupen- 
dous silliness of certain stanzas with an anti-climax at the end 
of each, which were framed and hung up on the wall. Curious, 
however, after reading this announcement, to sec w hat kind of 
morsels were so carefully preserved, I turned a few leaves, and 

XI 



CANADA. 



found them scrawled ail over with the vilest and the filthiest 
ribaldry that ever human hogs delighted in. 

It is humiliating enough to know that there are among men, 
brutes so obscene and worthless, that they can delight in laying 
their miserable profanations upon the very steps of Nature's 
greatest altar. But that these should be hoarded up for the 
delight of their fellow swine, and kept in a public place where 
any eyes may see them, is a disgrace to the English language in 
which they arc written (though I hope few of these entries have 
been made by Englishmen), and a reproach to the English side, 
on which they are preserved. 

The quarters of our soldiers at Niagara, are finely and airily 
situated. Some of them are large detached houses on the plain 
above the Falls, which were originally designed for hotels ; and 
in the evening time, when the women and children were lean- 
ing over Ihe balconies watching the men as they played at ball 
and other games upon the grass before the door, they often 
presented a little picture of cheerfulness and animation which 
made it quite a pleasure to pass that way. 

At any j garrisoned point where the line of demarcation be- 
tween one country and another is so very narrow as at Niagara, 
desertion from the ranks can scarcely fail to be of frequent 
occurrence : and it may be reasonably supposed that, when the 
soldiers entertain the wildest and maddest hopes of the fortune 
and independence that await them on the other side, the im- 
pulse to play traitor, which such a place suggests to dishonest 
minds, is not weakened. But it very rarely happens that the 
men who do desert, are happy or contented afterwards; and 
many instances have been known in which they have confessed 
their grievous disappointment, and their earnest desire to return 
to their old service, if they could but be assured of pardon, or 
of lenient treatment. 31 any of their comrades, notwithstanding, 
do the like, from lime to time ; and instances of loss of life in 
the effort to cross the river with this object, arc far from being 
uncommon. Several men were drowned in the attempt to swim 
across, not long ago; and one, who had the madness to trust 
himself upon a table as a raft, was swept down to the whirl- 



CANADA. 



250 



pool, where his mangled body eddied round and round, some 
days. 

I am inclined to think that the noise of the Falls is very much 
exaggerated ; and this will appear the more probable when the 
depth of the great basin in which the water is received, is taken 
into account. At no time during our stay here, was the wind 
at all high or boisterous, but we never heard them, three miles 
off, even at the very quiet time of sunset, though w T e often tried. 

Queenston, at which place the steamboats start for Toronto 
(or I should rather say at which place they call, for their wharf 
isatLewiston on the opposite shore), is situated in a delicious 
valley, through which the Niagara river, in colour a very deep 
green, pursues its course. It is approached by a road that takes 
its winding way among the heights by which the town is shelter- 
ed; and seen from this point is extremely beautiful and pic- 
turesque. On the most conspicuous of these heights stood a 
monument erected by the Provincial legislature in memory of 
General Brock, who was slain in a battle with the American 
Forces, after having won the victory. Some vagabond, sup- 
posed to be a fellow of the name of Lett, who is now, or who 
lately was, in prison as a felon, blew up ihis monument two 
years ago, and it is now a melancholy ruin, with a long 
fragment of iron railing hanging dejectedly from ils top, and 
waving to and fro like a wild ivy branch or broken vine stem. 
It is of much higher importance than it may seem, that this 
statue should be repaired at the public cost, as it ought to have 
been long ago. Firstly, because it is beneath the dignity of 
England to allow a memorial raised in honour of one of her 
defenders, to remain in this condition, on the very spot where 
he died. Secondly, because the sight of it in its present state, 
and the recollection of the unpunished outrage which brought 
it to ihis pass, is not very likely to soothe down border feelings 
among English subjects here, or compose their border quarrels 
and dislikes. 

I was standing on the wharf at this place, watching the pas- 
sengers embarking in a steamboat which preceded that whose 
coining we awaited, and participating in the anxiety with which 



CANADA. 



a sergeant's wife was collecting her few goods together— kdftj)* 
ingonc distracted eye hard upon the porters, who were hurrying 1 
thorn on hoard, and the other on a hooplcss washing-tub for 
which, as being the most utterly worthless of all her moveables, 
she seemed to entertain particular affection — when three or four 
soldiers with a recruit came up, and went on board. 

The recruit was a likely young fellow enough, strongly 
built and well made, but by no means sober : indeed he had 
all the air of a man who had been more or less drunk for some 
days, He carried a small bundle over his shoulder, slung at 
the end of a w alking-stick, and had a short pipe in his mouth. 
IJc was as dosty and dirty as recruits usually are, and his shoes 
betokened that he had travelled on foot some distance, but he 
Mas in a very jocose state, and shook hands with this soldier, 
and clapped that one on the back, and talked and laughed con- 
tinually, like a roaring idle dog as he was. 

The soldiers rather laughed at this blade than with him : 
seeming to say, as they stood straightening their canes in their 
hands, and looking coolly at him over their glazed stocks, 
"'Gb on, my boy, while you may! you '11 know heller 
bye and bye : ; ' when suddenly the novice, who had been back- 
ing towards the gangway in his noisy merriment, fell over- 
board before their eyes, and splashed heavily down into the 
river between the vessel and the dock. 

I never saw r such a good thing as the change that came over 
these soldiers in an instant. Almost before the man was down, 
their professional manner, their stiffness and constraint, were 
gone, and they w 7 cre filled with the most violent energy. In 
less time than is required to tell it, they had him out again, 
feet first, with the tails of his coat flapping over his eyes, 
everything about him hanging the wrong way, and the water 
streaming off at every thread in his threadbare dress. But the 
moment they set him upright and found that he was none the 
worse, they were soldiers again, looking over their glazed 
stocks more composedly than ever. 

Tltc half-sobered recruit glanced round for a moment, as if 
bis first impulse were to express some gratitude for his pre- 



TOKOMO. 



scrvation, but seeing them with this air of total unconcern, 
and having his wet pipe presented to him with an oath by the 
soldier who had been by far the most anxious of the party, he 
stuck it in his mouth, thrust his hands into his moist pockets, 
and without even shaking the water off his clothes, walked on 
board whistling; not to say as if nothing had happened, but as 
if he had meant to do it, and it had been a perfect success. 

Our steamboat came up directly this had left the wharf, and. 
soon bore us to the mouth of the Niagara : where the stars and 
stripes of America flutter on one side, and the Union Jack of 
England on the other : and so narrow is the space between 
them, that the sentinels in cither fort can often hear the watch- 
word of the other country given. Thence we emerged on Lake 
Ontario, an inland sea; and by half-past six o'clock were at 
Toronto. 

The country round this town being very flat, is bare of 
scenic interest: but the town itself is full of life and motion, 
bustle, business, and improvement. The streets are well paved, 
and lighted with gas ; the houses are large and good ; the shops 
excellent. Many of them have a display of goods in their win- 
dows, such as may be seen in thriving county towns in Eng- 
land : and there are some which would do no discredit to the 
mclropolis itself. There is a good stone prison here ; and there 
arc, besides, a handsome church, a court-house, public ofTices, 
many commodious private residences, and a government ob- 
servatory for noting and recording the magnetic variations. 
In the College of Upper Canada, which is one of the public 
establishments of the city, a sound education in every depart- 
ment of polite learning can be had, at a very moderate expense : 
the annual charge for the instruction of each pupil, not ex- 
ceeding nine pounds sterling. It has pretty good endowments 
in the way of land, and is a valuable and useful institution. 

The first stone of a new college had been laid but a few days 
before, by the Governor General. It will be a handsome, 
spacious edifice, approached by a long avenue, which is already 
planted and made available as a public walk. The town is well 
adapted for wholesome exercise at all seasons, for the foot- 



KINGSTON. 



ways in the thoroughfares which lie beyond the principal 
street, arc planked like floors, and kept in very good and clean 
repair. 

It is matter of deep regret that political differences should 
have run high in this place, and led to most discreditable and 
disgraceful results. It is not long, since guns were discharged 
from a window in this town at the successful candidates in an 
election, and the coachman of one of them was actually shot in 
the body, though not dangerously wounded. But one man was 
killed on the same occasion 5 and from the very window whence 
he received his death, the very flag which shielded his murderer 
(not only in the commission of his crime, but from its conse- 
quences), was displayed again on the occasion of the public ce- 
remony performed by the Governor General, to which I have 
just adverted. Of all the colours in the rainbow, there is but 
one which could be so employed : I need not say that flag was 
orange. 

The time of leaving Toronto for Kingston, is noon. By eight 
o'clock next morning, the traveller is at the end of his journey, 
which is performed by steamboat upon Lake Ontario, calling at 
Port Hope and Coburg, the latter a cheerful thriving little 
town. Vast quantities of flour form the chief item in the 
freight of these vessels. We had no fewer than one thousand 
and eighty barrels on board, between Coburg and Kingston. 

The latter place, which is now the seat of government in Ca- 
nada, is a very poor town, rendered still poorer in the ap- 
pearance of its market-place by the ravages of a recent fire. 
Indeed, it may be said of Kingston, that one half of it appears 
to be burnt down, and the other half not to be built up. The 
Government House is neither elegant nor commodious, yet it 
is almost the only house of any importance in the neigh- 
bourhood. 

There is an admirable jail here, well and wisely governed, 
and excellently regulated, in every respect. The men were 
employed as shoemakers, ropemakers, blacksmiths, tailors, car- 
penters, and stonecutters ; and in building anew prison, which 
was pretty far advanced towards completion. The female pri- 



KINGSTON TO MONTREAL. 



263 



soncrs were occupied in needlework. Among them was a 
beautiful girl of twenty, who had-beeu there nearly three years. 
She acted as bearer of secret despatches for the self-styled Pa- 
triots on Navy Island, during the Canadian Insurrection : some- 
times dressing as a girl, and carrying them in her stays ; some- 
times attiring herself as a boy, and secreting them in the 
lining of her hat. In the latter character she always rode as a 
boy would,which w as nothing to her, for she could govern any 
horse that any man could ride, and could drive four-in-hand 
with the best whip in those parts. Setting forth on one of her 
patriotic missions, she appropriated to herself the first horse 
she could lay her hands on ; and this offence had brought her 
where I saw her. She had quite a lovely face, though as the 
reader may suppose from this sketch of her history, there was 
a lurking devil in her bright eye, which looked out pretty 
sharply from between her prison bars. 

There is a bomb-proof fort here of great strength, which oc- 
cupies a bold position, and is capable, doubtless, of doing good 
service ; though the town is much too close upon the frontier 
to be long held, I should imagine, for its present purpose in 
troubled limes. There is also a small navy-yard, where a 
couple of Government steamboats were buildir.g, and getting on 
vigorously. 

We left Kingston for Montreal on the tenth of May, at half- 
past nine in the morning, and proceeded in a steamboat down 
the St. Lawrence river . The beauty of this noble stream at al- 
most any point, but especially in the commencement of this 
journey when it winds its way among the thousand Islands, can 
hardly be imagined. The number and constant successions of 
these islands, all green and richly wooded ; their fluctuating 
sizes, some so large that for half an hour together one among 
them will appear as the opposite bank of the river, and some so 
small that they are mere dimples on its broad bosom ; their 
infinite variety of shapes ; and the numberless combinations of 
beautiful forms which the trees growing on them, present : all 
form a picture fraught with uncommon interest and pleasure. 

In the afternoon we shot down some rapids where the river 



KINGSTON 10 MONTREAL, 



boiled and bubbled strangely, and where the force and head- 
long violence of the current were tremendous. At seven 
o'clock we reached Dickenson's Landing, whence travellers 
proceed for two or three hours by stage-coach : the navigation 
of the river being rendered so dangerous and difficult in the in- 
terval, by rapids, that steamboats do not make the passage. 
The number and length of those portages, over which the roads 
are bad, and the travelling slow, render the way between the 
towns of Montreal and Kingston, somewhat tedious. 

Our course lay over a wide, uninclosed tract of country at a 
little distance from the river side, whence the bright warning 
lights on the dangerous parts of the St. Lawrence shone vividly. 
The night was dark and raw, and the way dreary enough. It 
was nearly ten o'clock when we reached the wharf where the 
next steamboat lay ; and went on board, and to bed. 

She lay there all night, and started as soon as it was day. 
The morning was ushered in by a violent thunder-storm, and 
was very wet, but gradually improved and brightened up. 
Going on deck after breakfast, I was amazed to see floating 
down with the stream, a most gigantic raft, with some thirty 
or forty wooden houses upon it, and at least as many flag masts, 
so that it looked like a nautical street. I saw many of these 
rafts afterwards, but never one so large. All the timber, or 
''lumber," as it is called in America, which is brought down 
the St. Lawrence, is floated down in this manner. When the 
raft reaches its place of destination, it is broken up ; the mate- 
rials are sold ; and the boatmen return for more. 

At eight we landed again, and travelled by a stage-coach for 
four hours through a pleasant and well-cultivated country, 
perfectly French in every respect : in the appearance of the 
cottages; the air, language, and dress of the peasantry; the 
signboards on the shops and taverns ; and the Yirgin's shrines, 
and crosses, by the wayside. Nearly every common labourer 
and boy, though he had no shoes to his feet, wore round his 
waist a sash of some bright colour : generally red : and the 
women, who were working in the fields and gardens, and doing 
all kinds of husbandry, wore, one and all, great flat straw hats 



MONTREAL TO QUEBEC. 



w ilh most capacious brims. There were Catholic Priests and 
Sisters of Charity to the village streets : and images of the Sa- 
viour at the corners of cross-roads, and in other public places. 

At noon we went on board another steamboat, and reached 
the village of Lachine, nine miles from Montreal, by three 
o'clock. There, we left the river, and went on by land. 

Montreal is pleasantly situated on the margin of the St. Law- 
rence, and is backed by some bold heights, about which there 
are charming rides and drives. The streets are generally nar 
row and irregular, as in most French towns of any age; but 
in the more modern parts of the city, they are wide and airy. 
They display a great variety of very good shops ; and both in 
the town and suburbs there are many excellent private dwell- 
ings. The granite quays are remarkable for their beauty, so- 
lidity, and extent. 

There is a very large Catholic cathedral here, recently 
erected: with two tall spires, of which one is yet unfinished. 
In the open space in front of this edifice, stands a solitary, 
grim-looking, square brick tower, which has a quaint and re- 
markable appearance, and w hich the wiseacres of the place 
have consequently determined to pull dow r n immediately. The 
Government House is very superior to that at Kingston, and 
the town is full of life and bustle. In one of the suburbs is a 
plank road — not footpath— five or six miles long, and a famous 
road it is too. All the rides in the vicinity were made doubly 
interesting by the bursting out of spring, which is here so ra- 
pid, that it is but a day's leap from barren winter, to the bloom- 
ing youth of summer. 

The steamboats to Quebec, perform the journey in the night'; 
that is to say, they leave Montreal at six in the evening, and 
arrive in Quebec at six next morning. We made this excur- 
sion during our stay in Montreal (which exceeded a fortnight), 
and were charmed by its interest and beauty. 

The impression made upon the visitor by this Gibraltar of 
America : its giddy heights; its citadel suspended, as it were, in 
the air ; its picturesque steep streets and frowning gateways ; and 
the splendid views which burst upon the eye at every turn : is at 



QUEBLX. 



once unique and lasting. It is a place not to be forgotten or 
mixed up in the mind with other places, or altered for a mo- 
ment in the crowd of scenes a traveller can recall. Apart from 
the realities of this most picturesque city, there are associa- 
tions clustering about it which would make a desert rich in in- 
terest. The dangerous precipice along whose rocky front, 
Wolfe and his brave companions climbed to glory ; the Plains 
of Abraham, where he received his mortal wound ; the fortress, 
so chivalrously defended by Montcalm ; and his soldier's grave, 
dug for him while yet alive, by the bursting of a shell; arc not 
the least among them, or among the gallant incidents of his- 
tory. That is a noble Monument too, and worthy of two great 
nations, which perpetuates the memory of both brave generals, 
and on which their names are jointly written. 

The city is rich in public institutions and in Catholic churches 
and charities, but it is mainly in the prospect from the site of 
the Old Government House, and from the Citadel, that its sur- 
passing beauty lies. The exquisite expanse of country, rich 
in field and forest, mountain-height and water, which lies 
stretched out before the view r , with miles of Canadian villages, 
glancing in long white streaks, like veins along the landscape ; 
the motley crowd of gables, roofs, and chimney tops in the old 
hilly town immediately at hand ; the beautiful St. Lawrence 
sparkling and flashing in the sunlight ; and the tiny ships below 
the rock from which you gaze, whose distant rigging looks like 
spiders' webs against the light, while casks and barrels on their 
decks dwindle into toys, and busy mariners become so many 
puppets : all this, framed by a sunken window in the fortress 
and looked at from the shadowed room within, forms one of 
the brightest and the most enchanting pictures that the eye can 
rest upon. 

In the spring of the year, vast numbers of emigrants who 
have newly arrived from England or from Ireland, pass be- 
tween Quebec and Montrealon their way to the back woods and 
new settlements of Canada. If it be an entertaining lounge, 
(as I very often found it) to take a morning stroll upon the quay 
at Montreal, and sec them grouped in hundreds on the public 



QUEBEC TO MONTREAL, 



267 



wharfs about their chests and boxes, it is matter of deep in- 
terest to be their fellow-passenger on one of these steamboats, 
and, mingling with the concourse, see and hear them unob- 
served. 

The vessel in which we returned from Quebec to Montreal 
was crowded with them, and at night they spread their beds 
between decks (those who had beds, at least), and slept so close 
and thick about our cabin door, that the passage to and fro was 
quite blocked up. They were nearly all English ; from Glou- 
cestershire the greater part; and had had a long winter -passage 
out : but it was wonderful to see how clean the children had 
been kept, and how untiring in their love and self-denial all 
the poor parents were. 

Cant as we may, and as we shall to the end of all things, it 
is very much harder for the poor to be virtuous than it is for 
the rich ; and the good that is in them, shines the brighter for 
it. In many a noble mansion lives a man, the best of husbands 
and of fathers, whose private worth in both capacities is jusiiy 
lauded to the skies. But bring him here, upon this crowded 
deck. Strip from his fair young wife her silken dress and 
jewels, unbind her braided hair, stamp early wrinkles on her 
brow T , pinch her pale check with care and much privation, 
array her faded form in coarsely patched attire, let there be 
nothing but his love to set her forth or deck her out, and you 
shall put it to the proof indeed. So change his station in the 
world, that he shall sec in those young things who climb 
about his knee : not records of his w r calth and name : but little 
wrestlers with him for his daily bread ; so many poachers on his 
scanty meal ; so many units to divide his every sum of comfort, 
and farther to reduce its small amount. In lieu of the endear- 
ments of childhood in its sweetest aspect, heap upon him all its 
pains and wants, its sicknesses and ills, its fretfulness, caprice, 
and querulous endurance : let its prattle be, not of engaging 
infant fancies, but of cold, and thirst, and hunger : and if his 
fatherly affection outlive all this, and he be patient, watchful, 
tender ; careful of his children's lives, and mindful always of 
their joys and sorrows ; then send him back to Parliament, and 



MONTREAL TO ST. JOHN'S. 



Pulpit, and (o Quarter Sessions, and when he hears fine talk of 
the depravity of those who live from hand tomoulh, and labour 
hard to do it, let him speak up, as one who knows, and tell 
those holders forth that they, by parallel with such a class, 
should be High Angels in their daily lives, and lay but humble 
siege to Heaven at last. 

Which of us shall say what he would be, if such realities, with 
small relief or change all through his days, were his ! Looking 
round upon these people : far from home, houseless, indigents, 
wandering, weary with travel and hard living : and seeing how 
patiently they nursed and tended their young children ; how 
they consulted ever their wants first, then half supplied their 
own ; what gentle ministers of hope and faith the women were; 
how the men profited by their example ; and how 7 very, very 
seldom even a moment's petulance or harsh complaint broke 
out among them : I felt a stronger love and honour of my kind 
come glowing on my heart, and wished to God there had been 
i any Atheists in the better part of human nature there, to 
read with me this simple lesson in the book of Life. 



We left Montreal for Kcw r York again , on the thirtieth of 
May ; crossing to La Prairie, on the opposite shore of the St. 
Lawrence, in a steamboat ; we then took the railroad to St. 
John's, w r hich is on the brink of Lake Ghamplain. Our last 
greeting in Canada was from the English officers in the pleasant 
barracks at that place ( a class of gentlemen w 7 ho had made 
every hour of our visit memorable by their hospitality and 
friendship) ; and with u Rule Britannia" sounding in our ears, 
soon left it far behind. 

But Canada has held, and always will retain, a foremost place 
in my remembrance. Few Englishmen are prepared to find it 
w hat it is. Advancing quietly ; old differences settling down, 



MONTREAL TO ST. JOHN'S. 



and being fast forgotten ; public feeling and private enterprise 
alike in a sound and wholesome state ; nothing of flush or fever 
in its system, but health and vigour throbbing in its steady 
pulse : it is full of hope and promise. To me — who bad been 
accustomed to think of it as something left behind in the strides 
of advancing society, as something neglected and forgotten, 
slumbering and wasting in its sleep — the demand for labour 
and tbe rates of wages ; the busy quays of Montreal ; the vessels 
taking in their cargoes, and discharging them; the amount of 
shipping in the different ports; the commerce, roads, and public 
works, all made to last; the respectability and character of the 
public joGrnals ; and the amount of rational comfort and hap- 
piness which honest industry may earn : were very great sur- 
prises. The steamboats on the lakes, in their conveniences, 
cleanliness, and safety ; in the gentlemanly character and bear- 
ing of their captains ; and in the politeness and perfect comfort 
of their social regulations ; are unsurpassed even by the famous 
Scotch vessels, deservedly so much esteemed at home. The 
inns are usually bad; because the custom of boarding at hotels 
is not so general here as in the States, and the British officers, 
who form a large portion of the society of every town, live 
chiefly at the regimental messes : but in every other respect, 
the traveller in Canada will And as good provision for his com- 
fort as in any place I know. 

There is one American boat — the vessel which carried us on 
Lake Champlain, from St. John's to Whitehall — which I praise 
very highly, but no more than it deserves, when I say that it is 
SU] crior even to that in which we went from Qucenston to 
Toronto, or to that in which we travelled from the latter place 
to Kingston, or I have no doubt I may add, to any other in the 
world. This steamboat, which is called the Burlington, is a 
perfectly exquisite achievement of neatness, elegance, and 
order. The decks are drawing-rooms ; the cabins are boudoirs, 
choicely furnished and adorned with prints, pictures, and 
musical instruments; every nook and corner in the vessel is a 
perfect curiosity of graceful comfort and beautiful contrivance, 
paplain I herman her commander, to whose ingenuity and 



?7n 



ALBANY. LEBANON. 



excellent taste these results are solely attributable, has bravely 
and worthily distinguished himself on more than one trying 
occasion : not least among them, in having the moral courage 
to carry British troops, at a time ( during the Canadian rebel- 
lion) when no other conveyance was open to them. He and his 
vessel are held in universal respect . both by his own country- 
uoiu and ours.; and no man ever enjoyed the popular esteem, 
vho, in his sphere of action, won and wore it better than this 
gentleman. 

By means of this floating palace we were soon in the United 
States again, and called that evening at Burlington; a pretty 
town, where we lay an hour or so. We reached Whitehall, 
where we were to disembark, at six next morning ; and might 
have done so earlier, but that these steamboats lie by for some 
hours in the night, in consequence of the hke becoming very 
narrow at that part of the journey, and difficult of navigation 
in the dark. Its width is so contracted at one point, indeed, 
that they are obliged to warp round by means of a rope. 

After breakfasting at Whitehall, we took the stage-coach for 
Albany : a large and busy town, where we arrived between 
five and six o'clock that afternoon ; after a very hot day's 
journey, for we were now in the height of summer again. At 
seven we started for New York on board a great North River 
steamboat, which was so crowded with passengers that the 
upper deck was like the box lobby of a theatre between the 
pieces, and the lower one like Tottenham Court Road on a 
Saturday night. But we slept soundly, notwithstanding, and 
soon after five o'clock next morning, reached New York. 

Tarrying here, only that day and night to recruit after our 
late fatigues, we started off once more upon our last journey 
in America. ^Vc had yet five days to spare before embarking 
for England, and I had a great desire to see " the Shaker Til- 
lage," which is peopled by a religious sect from whom it takes 
its name. 

To this end, we went up the North River again, as far as the 
town of Hudson, and there hired an extra to carry us to Leba- 
non, thirty miles distant * and of course another and a different 



NEW-YORK TO LEBANON. 



Lebanon from thai village where I slept on the night of the 
Prairie trip. 

The country through which the road meandered, was rich 
and beautiful j the weather very fine j and for many miles the 
Raatskill mountains, where Rip Van Winkle and the ghastly 
Dutchmen played at ninepins one memorable gusty afternoon, 
towered in the blue distance, like stately clouds. At one point, 
as we ascended a steep hill, athwart whose base a railroad, yet 
constructing, took its course, we came upon an Irish colony. 
With means at hand of building decent cabins, it was wonder- 
ful to see how clumsy, rough, and wretched, its hovels were. 
The best were poor protection from the weather ; the worst let 
in the wind and rain through wide breaches in the roofs of 
sudden grass, and in the walls of mud ; some had neither door 
nor window ; some had nearly fallen dov>n, and were imper- 
fectly propped up by stakes and poles : all were ruinous and 
filthy. Hideously ugly old women and very buxom young ones, 
pigs, dogs, men, children, babies, pots, kettles, dunghills, vile 
refuse, rank straw, and standing water, all w aUowing together 
in an inseparable heap, composed the furniture of every dark 
and dirty hut. 

Between nine and ten o'clock at night, we arrived at Lebanon, 
which is renowned for its warm baths, and for a great hotel, 
we 1 ' adapted, I have no doubt, to the gregarious taste of those 
seekers after health or pleasure who repair here, but inexpres- 
sibly comfortless to me. We were shown into an immense 
apartment, lighted by two dim candles, colled the drawing- 
room •. from which there was a descent by a flight of steps, to 
another vast desert called the dining-room = our bed-chambers 
were among certain long rows of little white-washed cells, 
which opened from either side of a dreary passage ; and were 
so like rooms in a prison that I half expected to be locked up 
when I went to bed, and listened involuntarily for the turning 
of the key on the outside. There need be baths somewhere in 
the neighbourhood, for the other washing arrangements were 
on as limited a scale as I ever saw, even in America : indeed, 
these bed-rooms were so very bare of even such common luxu- 



THE SHAKERS AT LEBANON. 



ries as chairs, that I should say they were not provided With 
enough of anything, hut that I bethink myself of our having 
been most bountifully bitten all night. 

The house is very pleasantly situated, however, and we had 
a good breakfast. That done, we went to visit our place of 
destination, which was some two miles oil, and the way to which 
w as soon indicated by a finger-post, whereon was painted, " To 
the Shaker Tillage." 

As we rode along, we passed a party of Shakers, who were 
at work upon the road ; who wore the broadest of all broad- 
brimmed hats 5 and were inall visible respects such very wooden 
men, that I felt about as much sympathy for them, and as 
much interest in them, as if they had been so many figure-heads 
of ships. Presently we came to the beginning of the village, 
and alighting at the door of a house where the Shaker manu- 
factures are sold, and which is the head-quarters of the eiders, 
requested permission to see the Shaker worship. 

Pending the conveyance of this request to some person in 
authority, we walked into a grim room, where several grim hats 
were hanging on grim pegs, and the time was grimly told by a 
grim clock, which uttered every tick with a kind of struggle, 
as if it broke the grim silence reluctantly, and under protest. 
3\anged against the wall were six or eight stiff high-backed 
chairs, and they partook so strongly of the general grimness, 
that one would much rather have sat on the floor than incurred 
the smallest obligation to any of them. ♦ 

Presently, there stalked into this apartment, a grim old 
Shaker, with eyes as hard, and dull, and cold, as the great 
round metal buttons on his coat and waistcoat : a sort of calm 
goblin. Being informed of our desire, he produced a newspa- 
per wherein the body of elders, whereof he was a member, had 
advertised but a few days before, that in consequence of cer- 
tain unseemly interruptions which their worship had received 
from strangers, their chapel was closed to the public for the 
space of one year. 

As nothing was to be urged in opposition to this reasonable 
arrangement, wc requested leave to make some trilling pur- 



SHE SHAKERS AT LABANON. 



273 



chases of Shaker goods ; which was grimly conceded. We ac- 
cordingly repaired to a store in the same house and on the op- 
posite side of the passage, where the stock was presided over by 
something alive in a russet case, which the elder said was a 
woman ; and which I suppose teas a woman, though I should not 
have suspected it. 

On the opposite side of the road was their place of worship : 
a cool clean edifice of wood, with large windows and green 
blinds : like a spacious summerhouse. As there was no getting 
into this place, and nothing was to be done but walk up and 
down, and look at it and the other buildings in the village 
(which were chiefly of wood, painted a dark red like English 
barns, and composed of many stories like English factories), I 
have nothing to communicate to the reader, beyond the scanty 
results I gleaned, the while our purchases were making. 

These people are called Shakers from their peculiar form ot 
adoration, which consists of a dance, performed by the men 
and women of all ages, who arrange themselves for that 
purpose in opposite parties : the men first divesting themselves 
of their hats and coats, which they gravely hang against the 
wall before they begin ; and tying a ribbon round their shirt- 
sleeves, as though they were going to be bled. They accompany 
themselves with a droning, humming noise, and dance until 
they are quite exhausted, alternately advancing and retiring in 
a preposterous sort of trot. The effect is said to be unspeak- 
ably absurd : and if I may judge from a print of this ceremony 
which I have in my possession; and which I am informed by 
those who have visited the chapel, is perfectly accurate; it 
must be infinitely grotesque. 

They are governed by a woman, and her rule is understood 
to be absolute, though she has the assistance of a council of 
elders. She lives, it is said, in strict seclusion, in certain rooms 
above the chapel, and is never shown to profane eyes. If she 
at all resemble the lady who presided over the store, it is a great 
charity to keep her as close as possible, and I cannot too strongly 
express my perfect concurrence in this benevolent pro- 
ceeding. 

18 



274 



LABAj\0?< TO 



All (he possessions and revenues of the settlement are thrown 
into a common stock, which is managed by the elders. As they 
have made converts among people who were well to do in the 
world, and are frugal and thrifty, it is understood that this fund 
prospers : the more especially as they have madelargc purchases 
of land. Nor is this at Lebanon the only Shaker settlement : 
there are, I think, at least, three o'.hers. 

They are good farmers, and all their produce is eagerly pur- 
chased and highly esteemed. "Shaker seeds," "Shaker herbs, 5 
and "Shaker distilled waters," are commonly announced for 
sale in the shops of towns and cities. They are good breeders 
of cattle, and are kind and merciful to the brute creation. 
Consequently, Shaker beasts seldom fail to find a ready 
market. 

They eat and drink together, after the Spartan model, at a 
great public table. There is no union of the sexes; and every 
Shaker, male and female, is devoted to a life of celibacy. Ru- 
mour has been busy upon this theme, but here again I must 
refer to the lady of the store, and say, that if many of the sister 
Shakers resemble her; I treat all such slander as bearing on its 
face the strongest marks of wild improbability. But that they take 
as proselytes, persons so young that they cannot know their 
own minds, and cannot possess much strength of resolution in 
this or any other respect, 1 can assert from my own observation 
of the extreme juvenility of certain youthful Shakers whom I 
saw at work among the party on the road. 

They are said to be good drivers of bargains, but to be honest 
and just in their transactions, and even in horse-dealing to 
resist those thievish tendencies which would seem, for some 
undiscovered reason, to be almost inseparable from that branch 
of traffic. In all matters they hold their own course quietly, 
live in their gloomy silent commonwealth, and show little de- 
sire to interfere with other people. 

This is well enough, but nevertheless I cannot, I confess, in- 
cline towards the Shakers; view them with much favour, or 
extend towards them any very lenient construction. 1 so abhor, 
and from my soul detest that bad spirit, no matter by what 



WEST POOT. 



class or sect it may be entertained, which would strip life of its 
healthful graces, rob youth of its innocent pleasures, pluck from 
maturity and age their pleasant ornaments, and make existence 
but a narrow path towards the grave : that odious spirit which, 
if it could have had full scope and sway upon the earth, must 
have blasted and made barren the imaginations of the greatest 
men, and left them, in their power of raising up enduring images 
before their fellow creatures yet unborn, no better than the 
beasts : that, in these very broad-brimmed hats and very sombre 
coats — in stiff-necked solemn-visaged piety, in short, no matter 
what its garb, whether it have cropped hair as in a Shaker vil- 
lage, or long nails as in a Hindoo temple — I recognize the worst 
among the enemies of Heaven and Earth, who turn the w r ater 
at the marriage feasts of this poor world, not into wine, but gall. 
And if there mustbe people vowed to crush the harmless fancies 
and the love of innocent delights and gaieties, which are a part 
of human nature : as much a part of it as any other love or 
hope that is our common portion : let them, for me, stand 
openly revealed among the ribald and licentious ; the very idiots 
know that Ihey arc not on the Immortal road, and wili despise 
them, and avoid them readily. 

Leaving the Shaker village with a hearty dislike of the old 
Shakers, and a hearty pity for the young ones : tempered by 
the strong probability of their running away as they grow older 
and wiser, which they not uncommonly do s we returned to Le- 
banon, and so to Hudson, by the way we had come upon c ihe 
previ-jus day. There, we took steamboat down the North 
River towards New York, but stopped some four hours' journey 
short of it, at West Point, where we remained that night, 
and all next day, and next night too. 

In this beautiful place : the fairest among the fair and lovely 
Highlands of the North River : shut in by deep green heights 
and ruined forts, and looking down upon the distant town of 
Newburgh, along a glittering path of sunlit water, with here 
and there a skiff, whose white sail often bends on some new 
tack as sudden flaws of wind come down upon her from the 
gullies in the hills : hemmed in, besides, all round with memo- 



WEST POINT ACADEMY. 



ries of Washington, and events of the revolutionary war : is the 
Military School of America. 

It could not stand on more appropriate ground, and any 
ground more beautiful can hardly be. The course of education 
is severe, but well-devised, and manly. Through June, July, 
and August, the young men encamp upon the spacious plain 
whereon the college stands ; and all the year their military 
exercises are performed there, daily. The term of study at 
this institution, which the State requires from all cadets, is four 
years; but, whether it be from the rigid nature of the disci- 
pline, or the national impatience of restraint, or both causes 
combined, not more than half the number who begin their 
studies here, ever remain to finish them. 

The number of cadets being about equal to that of the mem- 
bers of Congress, one is sent here from every Congressional 
district : its member influencing the selection. Commissions 
in the service are distributed on the same principle. The 
dw ellings of the various Professors are beautifully situated ; and 
there is a most excellent hotel for strangers, though it has the 
two drawbacks of being a total abstinence house (wines and 
spirits being forbidden to the students), and of serving the pub- 
lic meals at rather uncomfortable hours : to wit, breakfast at 
seven, dinner at one, and supper at sunset. 

The beauty and freshness of this calm retreat, in the very dawn 
and greenness of summer— it was then the beginning of June — 
were exquisite indeed. Leaving it upon the sixth, and return- 
ing to New York, to embark for England on the succeeding 
day, I was glad to think that among the last memorable beauties 
which had glided past us, and softened in the bright perspective, 
were those whose pictures, traced by no common hand, are 
fresh in most men s minds : not easily to grow old, or fade 
beneath the dust of Time : The Kaatskill Mountains, Sleepy 
Hollow, and the Tappaan Zee. 



THE PASSAGE HOME. 



CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH. 



TIIE PASSAGE HOME. 

I never had so much interest before, and very likely I shall 
never have so much interest again, in the state of the wind, 
as on the le.ng looked-for morning of Tuesday the Seventh of 
June. Some nautical authority had told me a day or two pre- 
vious, "anything with west in it, will do;" so when I darted 
out of bed at daylight, and throwing up the w indow, was saluted 
by a lively breeze from the north-west which had sprung up in 
the night, it came upon me so freshly, rustling w ilh so many 
happy associations, that I conceived upon the spot a special re- 
gard for all airs blowing from that quarter of the compass, which 
1 shall cherish, I dare say, until my own wind has breathed its 
last frail puff, and withdrawn itself for ever from the mortal 
calendar. 

The pilot had not been slow to lake advantage of this favour- 
able weather, and the ship which yesterday had lain in such a 
crowded dock that she might have retired from trade for good 
and ail, for any chance she seemed to have of going to sea, was 
now full sixteen miles away A gallant sight she was, when 
we, fast gaining on her in a steamboat, saw her in the distance 
riding at anchor : her tall masts pointing up in graceful lines 
against the sky, and every rope and spar expressed in delicate 
and thread-like outline: gallant, loo,when we, being all aboard, 
the anchor came up to the sturdy chorus u Cheerily men, oh 



280 



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cheerily I " and she followed proudly in the towing steamboat's 
w ake : but bravest and most gallant of all, when the tow-rope 
being cast adrift, the canvas fluttered from her masts, and spread- 
ing her white wings she soared away upon her free and solitary 
course. 

In the after cabin we w r ere only fifteen passengers in all, 
and the greater part w ere from Canada where some of us had 
known each other. The night was rough and squally, so were 
the next two days, hut they flew by quickly, and we were soon 
as cheerful and as snug a party, with an honest, manly-hearted 
captain at our head, as ever came to the resolution of being mu- 
tually agreeable, on land or water. 

We breakfasted at eight, lunched at twelve, dined at three, 
and took our tea at half-past seven. We had abundance of 
amusements, and dinner was not the least among them : firstly, 
for its own sake ; secondly, because of its extraordinary length : 
its duration, inclusive of all the long pauses between the 
courses, being seldom less than two hours and a half ; which 
was a subject of never-failing entertainment. By way of 
beguiling the tediousness of these banquets, a select association 
was formed at the lower end of the table, below the mast, to 
whose distinguished president modesty forbids me to make any 
further allusion, which, being a very hilarious and jovial insti- 
tution, was (prejudice apart) in high favour with the rest of 
the community, and particularly with a black steward, who 
lived for three weeks in a broad grin at the marvellous humour 
of these incorporated worthies. 

Then w r e had chess for those who played it, whist, cribbage, 
books, backgammon, and shovel-board. In all weathers, fair 
or foul, calm or windy, we w T ere every one on deck, walking 
up and down in pairs, lying in the boats, leaning over the side, 
or chatting in a lazy group together. We had no lack of music, 
for one played the accordion, another the violin, and another 
(who usually began at six o'clock, a.m.) the key-bugle: the 
combined effect of which instruments, when they all played 
different tunes, in different parts of the ship, at the same time, 
and within hearing of each other, as they sometimes did [every- 



THE PASSAGE HOME. 



281 



body being intensely satisfied with his own performance), was 
sublimely hideous. 

When all these means of entertainment failed, a sail would 
heave in sight ; looming, perhaps, the very spirit of a ship, in 
the misty distance, or passing us so close that through our 
glasses we could see the people on her decks, and easily make 
out her name, and whither she was bound. For hours toge- 
ther we could watch the dolphins and porpoises as they rolled 
and leaped and dived around the vessel; or those small crea- 
tures ever on the wing, the Mother Carey's chickens, which 
had borne us company from New York bay, and for a whole 
fortnight fluttered about the vessel's stern. For some days we 
had a dead calm, or very light winds, during which the crew 
amused themselves with fishing, and hooked an unlucky dol- 
phin, who expired, in all his rainbow colours, on the deck : an 
event of such importance in our barren calendar, that after- 
wards we dated from the dolphin, and made the day on whieh 
he died an era. 

Besides all this, when we were five or six days out, there 
began to be much talk of icebergs, of which wandering islands 
an unusual number had been seen by the vessels that had come 
into New York a day or two before we left that port, and of 
whose dangerous neighbourhood we were warned by the sud- 
den coldness of the weather, and the sinking of the mercury in 
the barometer. AVhilc these tokens lasted, a double lock-out 
was kept, and many dismal talcs were whispered, after dark, 
of ships that had struck upon the ice and gone down in the 
night; but the wind obliging us to hold a southward course, we 
saw none of them, and the weather soon grew bright and warm 
again. 

The observation every day at noon, and the subsequent 
working of the vessel's course, was, as may be supposed, a 
feature in our lives of paramount importance ; nor were there 
wanting (as there never are) sagacious doubters of the captain's 
calculations, who, so soon as his back was turned, would, in 
the absence of compasses, measure the chart with bits of string, 
and ends of pocket-handkerchiefs, and points of snuffers, and 



282 



THE PASSAGE HOME. 



clearly prove him (o be wrong by an odd thousand miles ©r so. 
II w as very edifying to see these unbelievers shake their heads 
and frown, and hear fnem hold forth strongly upon navigation : 
not that (hey knew anything about it, but that they always mis- 
trusted the captain in calm weather, or when the wind was 
adverse. Indeed, the mercury itself is not so variable as this 
class of passengers, whom you will see, when the ship is going 
nobly through the water, quite pale with admiration, swearing 
that the captain beats all captains ever known, and even hinting 
at subscriptions for a piece of plate ; and who, next morning, 
when the breeze has lulled, and all the sails hang useless in the 
idle air, shake their despondent heads again, and say, with 
screwed-up lips, they hope that captain is a sailor, but they 
shrewdly doubt him ; that they do. 

It even became an occupation in the calm, to wonder when 
the wind would spring up in the favourable quarter, where, it 
was clearly shown by all the rules and precedents, it ought to 
have sprung up long ago. The first mate, who whistled 
for it zealously, was much respected for his perseverance, 
and was regarded even by the unbelievers as a first rate , 
sailor. Many gloomy looks would he cast upward through 
the cabin skylights at the dapping sails while dinner was in pro- 
gress ; and some, growing bold in ruefulness, predicted that we 
should land about the middle of July. There are always on 
board ship, a Sanguine One, and a Despondent One. The 
latter character carried it hollow at this period of the voyage, 
and triumphed over the Sanguine One at every meal, by inquir- 
ing where he supposed the Great Western (which left New 
York a week after us) was noiv : and where he supposed the 
'Cunard' steam-packet was now : and what he thought of sail- 
ing vessels as compared with steam ships now : and so beset 
his life with pestilent attacks of that kind, that he loo was 
obliged to affect despondency, for very peace and quietude. 

These were additions to the list of entertaining incidents, but 
there was still another source of interest. We carried in the 
steerage nearly a hundred passengers : a little world of poverty : 
and as we came to know individuals among them by sight, from 



THE PASSAGE HOME. 



283 



looking down upon the deck where they took the air in the 
daytime, and cooked their food, and very often ate it too, we 
became carious to know their histories, and with what expec- 
tations they had gone out to America, and on what errands 
they were going home, and what their circumstances were. 
The information we got on these heads from the carpenter, who 
had charge of these people, ^vas often of the strangest kind. 
Some of them had been in America but three days, some but 
three months, and some had gone out in the last voyage of that 
very ship in which they were now returning home. Others had 
sold their clothes to raise the passage-money, and had hardly 
rags to cover them ; others had no food, and lived upon the 
charity of the rest ; and one man, it was discovered nearly at 
the end of Ihe voyage, not before — i'or he kept his secret close, 
and did not court compassion— had had no sustenance whatever 
but the bones and scraps of fat he took from the plates used in 
the after-cabin dinner, when they were put out to be washed. 

The whole system of shipping and conveying these unfortu- 
nate persons, is one that stands in need of thorough revision. 
If any class deserve to be protected and assisted by the Govern- 
ment, it is that class who are banished from their native land 
in search of the bare means of subsistence. All that could be 
done for these poor people by the great compassion and huma- 
nity of the captain and officers was done, but they require much 
more. The law is bound, at least upon the English side, to 
see that too many of them are not put on board one ship : and 
that their accommodations are decent : not demoralising and 
profligate. It is bound, too, in common humanity, to declare that 
no man shall be taken on board without his stock of provisions 
being previously inspected by some proper officer, and pro- 
nounced moderately sufficient for his support upon the voyage. 
It is bound to provide, or to require that there be provided, a 
medical attendant ; whereas in these ships there are none, 
though sickness of adults and deaths of children on the passage, 
are matters of Ihe very commonest occurrence. Above all it 
is the duty of any Government, be it monarchy or republic, to 
interpose and put an end to that system by which a firm of 



THE PASSAGE HOME. 



traders in emigrants purchase of the owners the whole 'tween- 
dccks of a ship, and send on board as many wretched people as 
they can lay hold of, on any terms they can get, without the 
smallest reference to the conveniences of the steerage, the 
number of berths, the slightest separation of the sexes, or 
anything but their own immediate profit. Nor is even this 
the worst of the vicious system : for certain crimping agents of 
these houses, who have a per centage on all the passengers they 
inveigle, are constantly travelling about those districts where 
poverty and discontent are rife, and tempting the credulous 
into more misery, by holding out monstrous inducements to 
emigration which never can be realised. 

The history of every family we had on board was pretty much 
the same. After hoarding up, and borrowing, and begging, and 
selling everything to pay the passage, they had gone out to New 
York, expecting to find its streets paved with gold; and had 
found them paved with very hard and very real stones. En- 
terprise was dull: labourers were not wanted; jobs of work 
were to be got, but the payment was not. They were coming 
back, even poorer than they went. One of them was carrying 
an open letter from a young English artisan, who had been in 
New York a fortnight, to a friend near Manchester, whom he 
strongly urged to follow him. One of the officers brought it to 
me as a curiosity. "This is the country, Jem," said the writer. 
" I like America. There is no despotism here ; that's the great 
thing. Employment of all sorts is going a-begging, and wages 
are capital. You have only to choose a trade, Jem, acd be it. 
I haven't made a choice of one yet, but I shall soon. At present 
I haven't quite made up my mind whether to be a carpenter— or 
a tailor." 

There was yet another kind of passenger, and but one more, 
who, in the calm and the light winds, was a constant theme of 
conversation and observation among us. This was an English 
sailor, a smart, thorough-built, English man-of-war's-manfrom 
his hat to his shoes, who was serving in the American navy, and 
having got leave of absence was on his way home to see his 
riends. When he presented himself to take and pay for his 



THE PASSAGE HOME. 



285 



passage, it had been suggested to him that being an able seaman 
he might as well work it and save the money, but this piece of 
advice he very indignantly rejected : saying, "He'd be damned 
but for once he'd ?o aboard ship, as a gentleman." Accordingly, 
ihey look his money, but he no sooner came aboard, than he 
stowed his kit in the forecastle, arranged to mess with the 
crew, and the very first lime the hands were turned up, went 
aloft like a cat, before anybody. And all through the passage 
there he was, first at the braces, outermost on the yards, per- 
petually lending a hand everywhere, but always with a sober 
dignity in his manner, and a sober grin on his face, which 
plainly said, tC I do it as a gentleman. For my own pleasure, 
mind you!'' 

At length, and at last, the promised wind came up in right 
good earnest, and away we went before it, with every stitch 
of canvas set, slashing through the water nobly. There was a 
grandeur in the motion of the splendid ship, as overshadowed by 
her mass of sails, she rode at a furious pace upon the waves, 
which filled one with an indescribable sense of pride and exul- 
tation. As she plunged into a foaming valley, how I loved to 
see the green waves, bordered deep with white, come rushing 
on astern, to buoy her upward at their pleasure, and curl 
about her as she stooped again, but always own her for their 
haughly mistress still ! On, on we flew T , with changing lights 
upon the water, being now in the blessed region of fleecy skies: 
a bright sun lighting us by day, and a bright moon by night ; the 
vane pointing directly homeward, alike the truthful index to the 
favouring wind and to our cheerful hearts; until at sunrise, one 
fair Monday morning — the twenty-seventh of June, I shall not 
easily forget the day — there lay before us, old Cape Clear, God 
bless if, showing, in the mist of early morning, like a cloud : 
the brightest and most welcome cloud, to us, that ever hid the 
face of Heaven's fallen sister — Home. 

Dim speck as it was in the wide prospect, it made the sun- 
rise a more cheerful sight, and gave to it that sort of human 
interest which it seems to want at sea. There, as elsewhere, 
the return of day is inseparable from some sense of renewed 



THE PASSAGE HOME. 



hope and gladness ; but the light shining on the dreary waste of 
water, and showing it in all its vast extent of loneliness, pre- 
sents a solemn spectacle, which even night, veiling it in dark- 
ness and uncertainly, docs not surpass. The rising of the moon 
is more in keeping with the solitary ocean ; and has an air of 
melancholy grandeur, which in its soft and gentle influence, 
seems to comfort while it saddens. I recollect when I was a 
very young child, having a fancy that the reflection of the moon 
in water was a path to Heaven, trodden by the spirits of good 
people on their way to God ; and this old feeling often came 
over me again, when I watched it on a tranquil night at sea. 

The wind was very light on this same Monday morning, but 
it was slill in the right quarter, and so, by slow degrees, we 
left Cape Clear behind, and sailed along, within sight of the 
coast of Ireland. And how merry we all were, and how loyal 
to the George Washington, and how full of mutual congratula- 
tions, and how venturesome in predicting the exact hour at 
which we should arrive at Liverpool, may he easily imagined 
and readily understood. Also, how heartily we drank the cap- 
tain's health that day at dinner; and how restless we became 
about packing up ; and how two or three of the most sanguine 
spirits rejected the idea of going to bed at all that night as some- 
thing it was not worth while to do, so near the shore, but went 
nevertheless, and slept soundly; and how to be so near our 
journey's end, was like a pleasant dream, from which one feared 
to wake. 

The friendly breeze freshened again next day, and on we 
w r ent once more before it, gallantly : descrying now and then 
an English ship going homeward under shortened sail, while 
we with every inch of canvas crowded on, dashed gaily past, 
and left her far behind. Towards evening, the weather turned 
hazy, with a drizzling rain; and soon became so thick, that we 
sailed, as it were, in a cloud. Still we swept onward like a 
phantom ship, and many an eager eye glanced up to where the 
Look-out on the mast kept watch for Holyhead. 

At length his long-expected cry was heard, and at the same 
moment there shone out from the haze and mist ahead, a gleam- 



THE PASSAGE HOME. 



287 



in;? light, which. presently was gone, and soon returned, and 
soon was gone again. Whenever it came back, the eyes of all 
onboard, brightened and sparkled like itself : and there we all 
stood, watching this revolving light upon the rock at Holyhead, 
and praising it for its brightness and its friendly warning, and 
lauding it, in short, above all other signal lights that ever were 
displayed, until it once more glimmered faintly in the distance, 
far behind us. 

Then it was time to fire a gun, for a pilot, and almost before 
its smoke had cleared away, a little boat with a light at her 
mast-head came bearing down upon us, through the darkness, 
swiftly. And presently, our sails being backed, she ran along- 
side ; and the hoarse pilot, wrapped and muffled in pea-coats 
and shawls to the very bridge of his wealhcr-ploughed-up nose, 
stood bodily among us on the deck. And I thing if that pilot 
had wanted to borrow fifty pounds for an indeQnite period on 
no security, we should have engaged to lend it him, among us, 
before his boat had dropped astern, or (which is the same thing) 
before every scrap of news in the paper he brought with him 
had become the common property of all on board. 

We turned in pretty late that night, and turned out pretty 
soon next morning. By six o'clock we clustered on the deck, 
prepared to go ashore ; and looked upon the spires, and roofs, 
and smoke, of Liverpool. By eight we all sat down in one of 
its Hotels, to eat and drink together for the last time. And by 
nine we had shaken hands all round, and broken up our social 
company for ever. 

The country, by the railroad, seemed, as we rattled through 
it, like a luxuriant garden. The beauty of the fields (so small 
they looked!), the hedge-rows, and the trees ; the pretty cot- 
tages, the beds of flowers, the old churchyards, the antique 
houses, and every w ell-known object : the exquisite delights of 
that one journey, crowding in the short compass of a summer's 
day, the joy of many years, and winding up with Home and all 
that makes it dear : no tongue can tell, or pen of mine describe. 



SLAVERY. 



CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH. 



SLAVERY. 

The upholders of slavery in America— of the atrocities of 
which system, I shall not write one word for w hich I have not 
ample pi oof and warrant — may be divided into three great 
classes. 

The first, arc those more moderate and rational owners of 
human cattle, who have come into the possession of them as so 
many coins in their trading capital, hut who admit the fright- 
ful nature of the Institution in the abstract, and perceive the 
dangers to society w ilh which it is fraught : dangers w hich how- 
ever distant they may be, or howsoever tardy in their coming 
on, are as certain to fall upon its guilty head, as is the Day of 
Judgment. 

The second, consists of all those owners, breeders, users, 
buyers and sellers of slaves, who will, until the bloody chapter 
has a bloody end, own, breed, use, buy, and sell them at all 
hazards; who.doggcdly deny the- horrors of the system, in the 
teeth of such a mass of evidence as never was brought to bear 
on any other subject, and to which the experience of every day 
contributes its immense amount ; who w ould at this or any other 
moment, gladly involve America in a war, civil, or foreign, 
provided that it had for its sole end and object the assertion of 
their right to perpetuate slavery, and to whip and work and 
torture slaves, unquestioned by any human authority, and un- 
assaiied by any human power; who, when they speak of 



SLAVERY. 



Freedom, mean the Freedom to oppress their kind, and to be 
savage, merciless, and cruel ; and of whom every man on his 
own ground, in republican America, is a more exacting, and a 
sterner, and a less responsible despot, than the Caliph Haroun 
Alraschid in his angry robe of scarlet. 

The third, and not the least numerous or influential, is com- 
posed of all that delicate gentility which cannot bear a superior, 
and cannot brook an equal ; of that class whose Republicanism 
means, "I will not tolerate a man above me : and of those 
below, none must approach too near ; " whose pride, in a land 
where voluntary servitude is shunned as a disgrace, must be 
ministered to by slaves ; and whose inalienable rights can only 
have their growth in negro wrongs. 

It has been sometimes urged that, in the unavailing efforts 
which have been made to advance the cause of Human Freedom 
in the republic of America (strange cause for history to treat 
of !), sufficient regard has not been had to the existence of the first 
class of persons ; and it has been contended that they are hardly 
used, in being confounded with the second. This is, no doubt, 
the case ; noble instances of pecuniary and personal sacrifice 
have already had their growth among them ; and it is much to 
be regretted that the gulf between them and the advocates of 
emancipation should have been widened and deepened by any 
means : the rather, as there are, beyond dispute, among these 
slave-owners, many kind masters who arc tender in the exercise 
of their unnatural pow 7 er. Still it is to be feared that this 
injustice is inseparable from the state of things with which 
humanity and truth are called upon to deal. Slavery is not a 
whit the more endurable because some hearts are to be found 
which can partially resist its hardening influences ; nor can the 
indignant tide of honest wrath stand still, because in its onward 
course it overwhelms a few who are comparatively innocent, 
among a host of guilty. 

The ground most commonly taken by these better men among 
the advocates of slavery, is this : " It is a bad system ; and for 
myself I would willingly get rid of it, if 1 could; most willingly. 
Hut it is not so bad, as you in England take it to be. You are 



SLAVERY. 



deceived by the representations of the emancipationists. The 
greater part of my slaves are much attached to me. You will 
say that I do not allow them to be severely treated ; but I will 
pui it to you whether you believe that it can be ageneralpraclice 
to treat them inhumanly, when it would impair their value, 
and would be obviously against the interests of their masters." 

Is it the interest of any man to steal, to game, to waste his 
health and mental faculties by drunkenness, to lie, forswear 
himself, indulge hatred, seek desperate revenge, or do murder ? 
No. All these are roads to ruin. And why, then, do men 
tread them? Because such inclinations are among the vicious 
qualities of mankind. Blot out, ye friends of slavery, from the 
catalogue of human passions, brutal lust, cruelty, and the abuse 
of irresponsible power ( of all earthly temptations the most 
difficult to be resisted}, and when ye have done so, and not 
before, we v, ill inquire whether it be the interest of a master to 
lash and maim the slaves, over whose lives and Jiuibs he has an 
absolute control. 

But again: this class, together with that last one 1 have 
named, the miserable aristocracy spawned of a false republic, 
lift up their voices and exclaim " Public opinion is all sufficient 
to prevent such cruelty as you denounce."' Public opinion ! 
Why, public opinion in the slave States is slavery, is it not? 
Public opinion, in the slave States, has delivered the slaves over, 
to the gentle mercies of their masters. Public opinion has 
made the laws, and denied them legislative protection. Public 
opinion has knotted the lash, heated the branding-iron, loaded 
the rifle, and shielded the murderer. Public opinion threatens 
the abolitionist with death, if he venture to the South : and drags 
him with a rope about his middle, in broad unblushing noon, 
through the first city in the East. Public opinion has, within 
a few years, burned a slave alive at a slow Gre in the city of St 
Louis; and public opinion has to this day maintained upon the 
bench that estimable Judge who charged the Jury, impanelled 
there to try his murderers, that their most horrid deed was an 
act of public opinion, and being so, must not be punished by the 
laws the public sentiment had made. Public opinion hailed 



294 



slavery; 



this doctrine with a howl of wild applause, and set the prisoners 
free, to walk the city, men of mark, and influence, and station, 
as they had been before. 

Public opinion ! what class of men have an immense pre- 
ponderance over the rest of the community, in their power of 
representing public opinion in the legislature? The slaveowners. 
They send from their twelve States, one hundred members, 
while the fourteen free States with a free population nearly 
double, return but a hundred and forty-two. Before whom do 
thepresidential candidates bow down the most humbly, on whom 
do they fawn the most fondly, and for whose tastes do they cater 
the most assiduously in their servile protestations ? The slave 
owners always. 

Public opinion ! hear the public opinion of the free South, as 
expressed by its own members in the House of Representatives 
at Washington. t£ I have a great respect for the chair," quoth 
North Carolina, u I have a great respect for the chair as an 
officer of the house, and a great respect for him personally ; 
nothing but that respect prevents me from rushing to the table 
and tearing that petition which has just been presented for the 
abolition of slavery in the district of Columbia, to pieces." — 
" I warn the abolitionists," says South Carolina, u ignorant, 
infuriated barbarians as they are, that if chance shall throw 
any of them into our hands, he may expect a felon's death." — 
" Let an abolitionist come within the borders of South Caro- 
lina," cries a third ; mild Carolina's colleague ; " and if we can 
catch him, we will try him, and notwithstanding the interfer- 
ence of all the governments on earth, including the Federal 
government, we will hang him." 

Public opinion has made this law. — It has declared that in 
Washington, in that city which takes its name from the father 
of America'.i liberty, any justice of the peace may bind with 
fetters any negro passing down the street and thrust him into 
jail : no offence on the black man's part is necessary. The 
justice says, " I choose to think this man a runaway :" and 
locks him up. Public opinion impowers the man of law when 
this is done, to advertise the negro in the newspapers, warning 



SLAVERY. 



295 



his owner io come and claim him, or he will be sold to pay the 
jail fees. But supposing he is a free black, and has no owner, 
it may naturally be presumed that he is set at liberty. No : he 
is sold to recompense his jatler. This has been done again, 
and again, and again. He has no means of proving his freedom j 
has no adviser, messenger, or assistance of any sort or kind ; no 
investigation into his case is made, or inquiry instituted. He, 
a free man, who may have served for years, and bought his 
liberty, is thrown into jail on no process, for no crime, and on 
no pretence of crime : and is sold to pay the jail fees. This 
scorns incredible, even of America, but it is the law. 

Public opinion is deferred to, in such cases as the following ; 
which is headed in the newspapers— 

" Interesting Law-Case. 

" An interesting case is now on trial in the Supreme Court, 
arising out of the following facts. A gentleman residing in 
Maryland had allowed an aged pair of his slaves, substantial 
though not legal freedom for several years. While thus living, 
a daughter was born to them, who grew up in the same liberty, 
until she married a free negro, and went with him to reside in 
Pennsylvania They had several children, and lived un- 
molested until the original owner died, when his heir attempted 
to regain them; but the magistrate before whom they were 
brought, decided that he had no jurisdiction in the case. The 
owner seized the ivoman and her children in the night, and 
carried them to Maryland." 

u Cash for negroes," " cash for negroes," "cash for negroes," 
is the heading of advertisements in great capitals down the long 
columns of the crowded journals. Wood-cuts of a runaway 
negro w ith manacled bands, crouching beneath a bluff pursuer 
in top boots, who having caught him, grasps him by the throat, 
agreeably diversify the pleasant text. The leading article 
protests against " that abominable and hellish doctrine of abo- 
lition, which his repugnant alike to every law of God and 



296 



SLAVEM . 



nature." The delicate mama, who smiles her acquiescence in 
this sprightly writing as she reads the paper in her cool piazza, 
quiets her youngest child who clings about her skirts, by 
promising the boy " a whip to beat the little niggers with." — 
But the negroes, little and big, are protected by public 
opinion. 

Let us try this public opinion by another test, which is impor- 
tant in three points of view : first, as showing how desperately 
timid of the public opinion slave owners are, in their delicate 
descriptions of fugitive slaves in widely circulated newspapers ; 
secondly, as showing how perfectly contented the slaves arc, 
and how very seldom they run away • thirdly, as exhibiting 
their entire freedom from scar, or blemish, or any mark of cruel 
infliction, as their pictures are drawn, not by lying abolitionists, 
but by their own truthful masters. 

The following are a few specimens of the advertisements in 
the public papers. It is only four years since the oldest among 
them appeared ; and others of the same nature continue to be 
published every day, in shoals. 

" Ran away, Negress Caroline. Had on a collar with one 
prong turned down." 

" Ran away, a black woman, Betsy. Had an iron bar on 
her right leg." 

"Ran away, the negro Manuel. Much marked wilh irons." 
" Ran away, the negress Fanny. Had on an iron band about 
her neck." 

"Ran away, a negro boy about twelve years old. Had 
round his neck a chain dog-collar with 'De Lam pert' engraved 
on it." 

" Ran away, the negro Hown. Has a ring of iron on his left 
foot. Also, Grise, his wife, having a ring and chain on the 
left leg." 

"Ran away, a negro boy named James. Said boy was 
ironed when he left me." 

"Committed to jail, a man who calls his name John. He has 
a clog of iron on his right foot which will weigh four or five 
pounds." 



SLAVERY. 



297 



"Detained at the police jail, the negro wench, Myra. Has 
several marks of lashing, and has irons on her feet." 

" Ran away, a negro woman and two children 5 a few days 
before she went off, I burnt her with a hot iron, on the left side 
of her face. I tried to make the letter M." 

"Ran away, a negro man named Henry; his left eye out, 
some scars from a dirk on and under his left arm, and much 
scarred with the whip." 

" One hundred dollars reward, for a negro fellow, Pompey, 
40 years old. He is branded on the left jaw." 

"Committed to jail, a negro man. Has no toes on the left 
foot." 

"Ran away, a negro woman named Rachel. Has lost all her 
toes except the large one." 

"Ran away, Sam. He was shot a short time since through 
the hand, and has several shots in his left arm and side." 

" Ran away, my negro man Dennis. Said negro has been 
shot in the left arm between the shoulder and elbow, which has 
paralysed the left hand." 

"Ran away, my negro man named Simon. He has been 
shot badly, in his back and right arm." 

" Ran away, a negro named Arthur. Hasa considerable scar 
across his breast and each ai m, made by a knife; loves to talk 
much of the goodness of God." 

" Twenty- five dollars reward for my man Isaac. He has a 
scar on his forehead, caused by a blow ; and one on his back, 
made by a shot from a pistol." 

"Ran away, a negro girl called Mary. Has a small scar 
over her eye, a good many teeth missing, the letter A is branded 
on her cheek and forehead." 

"Ran away, negro Ben. Has a scar on his right hand ; his 
thumb and foreGnger being injured by being shot last fall. A 
part of the bone came out. He has also one or two large scars 
on his back and hips." 

"Detained at the jail, a mulatto, named Tom. Hasa scar 
on the right cheek, and appears to have been burned with 
powder on the face." 



008 



SLAVERY. 



" Ran away, a negro man named Ned. Three of his fingers 
are drawn into the palm of his hand by a cut. Has a scar on 
the back of his neck, nearly half round, done by a knife." 

"Was committed to jail, a negro man. Says his name is 
Josiah. His back very much scarred by the whip ; and branded 
on the thigh and hips in three or four places, thus (J M). The 
rim of his right ear has been bit or cut off." 

u Fifty dollars reward, for my fellow Edward. He has a 
scar on the corner of his mouth, two cuts on and under his 
arm, and the letter E on his arm." 

" Ran away, negro boy Ellie. Has a scar on one of his 
arms from (he bite of a dog." 

" Ran away, from the plantation of James Surgettc, the 
fellowing negroes : Randal, has one ear cropped; Bob, has 
lost one eye; Kentucky Tom, has one jaw broken." 

" Ran away, Anthony. One of his ears cut off, and his left 
hand cut with an axe." 

" Fifty dollars reward for the negro Jim Blake. Has a 
piece cut out of each ear, and the middle finger of the left 
hand cutoff to the second joint." 

" Ran away, a negro woman named Maria. Has a scar on 
one side of her cheek, by a cut. Some scars on her back." 

" Ran away, the Mulatto wench Mary. Has a cut on the 
left arm, a scar on the left shoulder, and two upper teeth 
missing." 

I should say, perhaps, in explanation of this latter piece of 
description, that among the other blessings which public opinion 
secures to the negroes, is the common pratice of violently 
punching out their teeth. To make them wear iron collars by 
day and night, and to worry them with dogs, are pratices 
almost too ordinary to deserve mention. 

II Ran away, my man Fountain. Has holes in his ears, a 
scar on the right side of his forehead, has been shot in the 
hind parts of his legs, and is marked on the back with the 
whip." 

u Two hundred and fifty dollars reward for my negro man 
Jim. He is much marked with shot in his right thigh. The 



SLAVERY. 



shot entered on the outside, halfway between the hid and knee 
joints." 

" Brought to jail, John. Left car cropt." 

" Taken up a negro man. Is very much scarred about the 
face and body, and has the left ear bit off." 

u Ran away, a black girl, named Mary. Has a scar on her 
cheek, and the end of one of her toes cut off." 

Ran away, my Mulatto woman, Judy. She has had her 
right arm broke." 

" Ran away, my negro man, Levi. His left hand has been 
burnt, and 1 think the end of his forefinger is off." 

" Ran away, a negro man, named Washington. Has lost a 
part of his middle finger, and the end of his little finger." 

u Twenty-five dollars reward for my man Johu. The tip 
of his nose it bit off." 

u Twenty-five dollars reward for the negro slave, Sally. 
Walks as (hough crippled in the back." 

" Ran away, Joe Dennis. Has a small notch in one of his 
ears." 

" Ran away, negro boy Jack. Has a small crop out of his 
left car." 

" Ran away, a negro man named Ivory. Has a small piece 
cut out of the top of each ear." 

While upon the subject of cars, I may observe that a dis- 
tinguished abolitionist in New York once received a negro's 
ear, which had been cut off close to the head, in a general post 
letter. It was forwarded by the free and independent gentle- 
man who had caused it to be amputated, with a polite request 
that he would place the specimen in his "collection.";' 

I could enlarge this catalogue with broken arms, and broken 
legs, and gashed flesh, and missing teeth, and lacerated backs, 
and bites of dogs, and brands of red-hot irons innumerable : 
but as my readers will be sufficiently sickened and repelled 
already, I will turn to another branch of the subject. 

These advertisements, of which a similar collection might 
be made for every year, and month, and week, and day; and 
which are coolly read in families as things of course, and as 



300 



SLAVERY. 



a part of the current news and small-talk ; will serve to show- 
how very much the slaves profit by public opinion, and how 
tender it is in their behalf. But it may be worth while to 
inquire how T the slave owners, and the class of society to 
which great numbers of them belong, defer to public opinion 
in their conduct, not to their slaves but to each other; how 
they are accustomed to restrain their passions , what their 
bearing is among themselves; whether they are fierce or 
gentle: whether their social customs be brutal, sanguinary, 
and violent, or bear the impress of civilisation and refinement. 

That we may have no partial evidence from abolitionists in 
this inquiry, either, I will once more turn to their own news- 
papers, and I w ill confine myself, this time, to a selection from 
paragraphs which appeared from day to day, during my visit 
to America, and which refer to occurrences happening while I 
was there. The italics in these extracts, as in the foregoing, 
are my own. 

These cases did not all occur, it will be seen, in territory ac- 
tually belonging to legalised Slave States, though most and 
those the very worst among them did, as their counterparts 
constantly do ; but the position of the scenes of action in re- 
ference to places immediately at hand, where slavery is the law ; 
and the strong resemblance between that class of outrages and 
the rest ; lead to the just presumption that the character of the 
parties concerned was formed in slave districts, and brutalised 
by slave customs. 

i£ Horrible Tragedy. 

"By a slip from the The Southport Telegraph, Wisconsin, 
we learn that the Hon. Charles G. P. Arndt, Member of the 
Council for Brown county, was shot dead on the floor of the 
Council chamber, by James R. Yinyard, Member from Grant 
county. The affair grew out of a nomination for Sheriff of 
Grant county. Mr. E. S. Baker was nominated and supported 
by Mr. Arndt. This nomination was opposed by Yinyard, who 
wanted the appointment to vest in his own brother. In the 



SLAVERY. 



301 



course of debate, the deceased made some statements which 
Vinyard pronounced false, and made use of violent and in 
suiting language, dealing largely in personalities, to which 
Mr. A. made no reply. After the adjournment, Mr. A. stepped 
up to Vinyard, and requested him to retract, which he refused 
to do, repeating the offensive words. Iir. Arndt then made a 
blow at Vinyard, who stepped back a pace, drew a pistol, and 
shot him dead. 

"The issue appears to have been provoked on the part of 
Vinyard, who was determined at all hazard to defeat the ap- 
pointment of Baker, and who, himself defeated, turned his ire 
and revenge upon the unfortunate Arndt." 

" The Wisconsin Tragedy. 

"Public indignation runs high in the territory of Wisconsin, 
in relation to the murder of C. C. P. Arndt, in the Legislative 
Hall of the Territory. Meetings have been held in different 
counties of Wisconsin, denouncing the practice of secretly bear- 
ing arms in the Legislative chambers of the country. We have 
seen the account of the expulsion of James R. Vinyard, the per- 
petrator of the bloody deed, and arc amazed to hear, that, after 
this expulsion by those who saw Vinyard kill Mr. Arndt in 
the presence of his aged father, who was on a visit to see his 
son, little dreaming that he was to witness his murder, Judge 
Dunn has discharged Vinyard on bail. The Miners' Free Press 
speaks in terms of merited rebuke at the outrage upon the feel- 
ings of the people of Wisconsin. Vinyard was within arm's 
length of Mr. Arndt, when he took such deadly aim at him, 
that he never spoke. Vinyard might at pleasure, being so near 
have only wounded him, but he chose to kill him." 

" Murder. 

"By a letter in a St. Louis paper of the 14th, we notice a 
terrible outrage at Burlington, Iowa. A Mr. Bridgman having 



302 



SLAVERY. 



had a difficulty with a citizen of the place, Mr. Ross ; a brother- 
in-law of the latter provided himself with one of Colt's revolv- 
ing pistols, met Mr. B. in the street, and discharged the contents 
of five of the barrels at him: each shot taking effect. Mr. B., 
though horribly wounded, and dying, returned the fire, and 
killed Ross on the spot." 

" Terrible Death of Robert Potter. 

" From the c Caddo Gazette/ of the 12th inst., we learn the 
frightful death of Colonel Robert Potter.... He was beset in his 
house by an enemy, named Rose. He sprang from his couch, 
seized his gun, and, in his night clothes, rushed from the house. 
For about two hundred yards his speed seemed to defy his pur- 
suers ; but, getting entangled in a thicket, he was captured. 
Rose told him that he intended to acta generous part, and give 
him a chance for his life. He then told Potter he might run, 
and he should not be interrupted till he reached a certain dis- 
tance. Potter started at the word of command, and before a 
gun was fired he had reached the lake. His first impulse was 
to jump in the water and dive for it, which he did. Rose was 
close behind him, and formed his men on the bank ready to 
shoot him as he rose. In a few seconds he came up to breathe ; 
and scarce had his head reached the surface of the water when 
it was completely riddled with the shot of their guns, and he 
sunk, to rise no more ! " 

a Murder in Arkansas. 

" We understand that a severe rencontre came off a few days 
since in the Seneca Nation, between Mr. Loose, the sub-agent 
of the mixed band of the Senecas, Quapaw, and Shawnees, and 
Mr James Gillespie, of the mercantile firm of Thomas G. Alli- 
son and Co., ofMaysville, Benton, County Ark, in which the 
latter was slain with a bowie-knife. Some difficulty had for 
some lime existed between the parties. It is said that Major 



SLAVERY. 



303 



Gillespie brought on the attack with a cane. A severe conflict 
ensued, during which two pistols were fired by Gillespie and 
one by Loose. Loose then stabbed Gillespie with one of those 
never failing weapons, a bowie-knife. The death of Major G. 
is much regretted, as he was a liberal-minded and energetic 
man. Since the above was in type, we have learned that Major 
Allison has stated to some of our citizens in town that Mr. Loose 
gave the first blow. We forbear to give any particulars, as 
the matter will be the subject of judicial investigation'' 

"Foul Deed. 

"The steamer Thames, just from Missouri river brought us 
a handbill, offering a reward of 500 dollars for the person who 
assassinated Lilburn W. Baggs, late Governor of this State, at 
Independence, on the night of the 6th inst. Governor Baggs, 
it is slated in a written memorandum, was not dead, but mort- 
ally wounded. 

''Since the above was written we received a note from the 
clerk of the Thames, giving ihe following particulars. Gov. 
Baggs was shot by some villain on Friday, 6th inst., in the 
evening, while sitting in a room in his own house in Indepen- 
dence. His son, a boy, hearing a report, ran into the room, 
and found the Governor sitting in his chair, with his jaw fallen 
down, and his head leaning back; on discovering the injury 
done his father, he gave the alarm. Foot tracks were found 
in the garden below the window, and a pistol picked up sup- 
posed to have been overloaded, and thrown from the hand of 
the scoundrel who fired it. Three buck shots, of a heavy load, 
took effect ; one going through his mouth, one into the brain, 
and another probably in or near the brain : all going into the 
back part of the neck and head. The Governor was still alive 
on the morning of the 7th ; but no hopes for his recovery by 
his friends, and but slight hopes from his physicians. 

u A man was suspected, and the Sheriff most probably has 
possession of him by this time. 



304 



SLAVERY. 



' ' The pistol was one of a pair stolen some days previous from 
a backer in Independence, and the legal authorities have the 
description of the other." 

Rencontre. 

"An unfortunate affair took place on Friday evening in 
Chatres Street, in which one of our most respectable citizens 
received a dangerous wound, from a poignard in the abdomen. 
From the Bee (New Orleans) of yesterday, we learn the follow- 
ing particulars . It appears that an article was published in the 
French side of the paper on Monday last, containing some 
strictures on the Artillery Battalion for firing their guns on 
Sunday morning, in answer to those from the Ontario and 
Woodbury, and thereby much alarm was caused to the families 
of those persons who were out all night preserving the peace of 
the city. Major C. Gaily, Commander of the battalion resent- 
ing this, called at the office and demanded the Author's name ; 
that of M. P. Arpin was given to him, who was absent at the 
time. Some angry words then passed with one of the proprie- 
tors, and a challenge followed 5 the friends of both parties tried 
to arrange the affair, but failed to do so. On Friday evening, 
about seven o'clock, Major Gaily met Mr. P. Arpin in Chatres 
Street, and accosted him. 'Are you Mr. Arpin ? ' 
' Yes, Sir.' 

" 'Then I have to tell you that you are a " : (applying 

an appropriate epithet.) 

" ' I shall remind you of your words, Sir.' 

" c But I have said I would break my cane on your shoulders.' 

u i I know it, but 1 have not yet received the blow.' 

" At these words, Major Gaily having a cane in his hands, 
struck Mr. Arpin across the face, and the latter drew a poignard 
from his pocket and stabbed Major Gaily in the abdomen. 

a Fears are entertained that the wound will be mortal. TVe 
understand that Mr. Arpin has given security for his appearance 
at the Criminal Court to answer the charge." 



SLAVERY. 



305 



u Affray in Mississippi. 

11 On the 27th ult., in an affray near Carthage, Leake county, 
Mississippi, between James Cottinghani and John Wilburn,the 
latter was shot by the former, and so horribly wounded, that 
there was no hope of his recovery. On the 2nd instant, there 
was an affray at Carthage between A. C. Sharkey and George 
Goff, in which the latter was shot, and thought mortally 
wounded. Sharkey delivered himself up to the authorities, but 
changed his mind and escaped/" 

u Personal Encounter'. 

" An encounter took place in Sparta, a few days since, be- 
tween the barkeeper of an hotel, and a man named Bury. It 
appears that Bury had become somewhat noisy, and that the 
barkeeper, determined to preserve order, had threatened to shoot 
Bury, whereupon Bury drew a pistol and shot the barkeeper 
down. He was not dead at the last accounts, but slight hopes 
were entertained of his recovery." 

"Duel. 

11 The clerk of the steamboat Tribune informs us that another 
duel was fought on Tuesday last, by Mr. Robbins, a bank officer 
in Vicksburg, and Mr. Fall, the editor of the Vicksburg Sen- 
tinel. According to the arrangement, the parties had six 
pistols each, which, after the word ' Fire !' they were to discharge 
as fast as they pleased. Fall fired two pistols without effect. 
Mr. Robbins' Orst shot took effect in Fall's thigh, who fell, and 
was unable to continue the combat." 

" Affray in Clarke County. 

" An unfortunate affray occurred in Clarke County (Mo.) near 

2# 



30G 



SLAVERY. 



Waterloo, on Tuesday the 19th ult., which originated in settling 
the partnership concerns of Messrs. M'Kane and M'Aliister, 
w ho had heen engaged in the business of distilling, and resulted 
in the death of the latter, who was shot down by Mr. M'Kanc, 
because of his attempting (o take possession of seven barrels of 
whiskey, the property of M'Kane, which had been knocked off 
to M'Aliister at a sheriff's sale at one dollar per barrel. 
M 'Kane immediately fled, andat the latest dates had not been 
taken. 

" This unfortunate affray caused considerable excitement in 
the neighbourhood, as both the parties were men with large 
families depending upon them and stood well in the community." 

I will quote but one more paragraph, which, by reason of its 
monstrous absurdity, may be a relief to these atrocious deeds. 

" Affair of Honour. 

"We have just heard the particulars of a meeting which 
took place on Six Mile Island, on Tuesday, between two young 
bloods of our city : Samuel Thurston, aged fifteen, and William 
Hine aged thirteen years. They were attended by young gen- 
tlemen of the same age. The weapons used on the occasion, 
were a couple of Dickson's best rifles; the distance, thirty 
yards. They took one fire, without any damage being sustained 
by either party, except the ball ot Thurston's gun passing 
through the crown of Hine's hat. Through the intercession of 
the Board of Honour, the challenge w r as withdrawn, and the dif- 
ference amicably adjusted." 

If the reader will picture to himself the kind of Board of 
Honjur which amicably adjusted the difference between these 
two little boys, who in any other part of the world would have 
been amicably adjusted on two porters' backs and soundly 
flogged with birchen rods, he will be possessed, no doubt, with 
as strong a sense of its ludicrous charactei, as that which sets 
me laughing whenever its image rises up before me. 



SLAVERY. 



307 



Now, I appeal to every human mind, imbued with the com- 
monest of common sense, and the commonest of common hu- 
manity ; to all dispassionate, reasoning creatures, of any shade 
of opinion ; and ask, with these revolting evidences of the state 
of society which exists in and about the slave districts of America 
before them, can they have a doubt of the real condition of the 
slave, or can they for a moment make a compromise between 
the institution or any of its flagrant fearful features, and their 
own just consciences? Will they say of any tale of cruelty 
and horror, however aggravated in degree, that it is impro- 
bable, when they can turn to the public prints, and, running, 
road such signs as these, laid before them by the men who rule 
the slaves : in their own acts and under their own hands? 

Do we not know that the worst deformity, and ugliness of 
slavery are at once the cause and the effect of the reckless li- 
cense taken by these freeborn outlaws? Do we not know that 
the man who has been born and bred among its wrongs; who 
has seen in his childhood husbands obliged at the word of com- 
mand to flog their wives ; women, indecently compelled to hold 
up their own garments that men might lay the heavier stripes 
upon their legs, driven and harried by brutal overseers in their 
time of travail, and becoming mothers on the field of toil, under 
the very lash itself; who has read in youth, and seen his virgin 
sisters read, descriptions of runaway men and women, and their 
disGgured persons, which could not be published elsewhere, of 
so much stock upon a farm, or at a show of beasts; — do we 
not know that that man, whenever his wrath is kindled up, will 
be a brutal savage? Do we not know that as he is a coward in 
his domestic life, stalking among his shrinking men and women 
slaves armed with his heavy whip, so he will be a coward out 
of doors, and carrying cowards' weapons hidden in his breast 
will shoot men down and stab them when he quarrels? And if 
our reason did not teach us this and much beyond ; if we were 
such idiots as to close our eyes to that fine mode of training 
which rears up such men; should we not know that they who 
among their equals stab and pistol in the legislative halls, and in 
the counting-house, and on the market-place, and in all the 



308 



SLAVERY. 



elsewhere peaceful pursuits of life, must be to their dependants, 
even though they were free servants, so many merciless and un- 
relenting- tyrants ? 

What! shall we declaim against the ignorant peasantry of 
Ireland, and mince the matter when these American taskmasters 
arc in question ? Shall we cry shame on the brutality of those 
who hamstring cattle: and spare the lights of Freedom upon 
earth who notch the cars of men and women, cut pleasant po- 
sies in the shrinking tlcsh, learn to write with pens of red-hot 
iron on the human face, rack their poetic fancies for liveries of 
mutilation which their slaves shall wear for life and carry to 
the grave, break living limbs as did the soldiery who mocked 
and slew the Saviour of the world, and set defenceless crea- 
tures up for targets ! Shal we whimper over legends of the tor- 
tures practised on each other by the Pagan Indians, and smile 
upon the cruelties of Christian men ! Shall we, so long as these 
things last, exult above the scattered remnants of that stately 
race, and triumph in the white enjoyment of their broad pos- 
sessions? Rather, for me, restore the forest and the Indian 
village ; in lieu of stars and stripes, let some poor feather flutter 
in the breeze; replace the streets and squares by wigwams ; 
and though the death -song of a hundred haughty warriors fill 
the air, it will be music to the shriek of one unhappy slave. 

On one theme, which is commonly before our eyes, and in 
respect of which our national character is changing fast, let 
the plain Truth bespoken, and let us not, like dastards, beat 
about the bush by hinting at the Spaniard and the fierce Ita- 
lian. When knives ares drawn by Englishmen in conflict let 
it be said and known : u We owe this change to Republican 
Slavery. These are the weapons of Freedom. With sharp 
points, and edges such as these, Liberty in America doth hew 
and hack her slaves; or, failing that pursuit, her sons devote 
them to a better use, and turn them on each other." 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 

There are many passages in this book, where I have been at 
some pains to resist the temptation of troubling my readers 
with my own deductions and conclusions ; preferring that they 
should judge for themselves, from such premises as I have laid 
before them. My only object in the outset, was, to carry them 
with me faithfully wheresoever I went, and that task I have 
discharged. 

But 1 may be pardoned , if on such a theme as the general 
character of the American people, and the general character of 
their social system, as presented to a stranger's eyes, I desire to 
express my own opinions in a few words, before I bring this 
volume to a close. 

They are, by nature, frank, brave, cordial, hospitable, and 
affectionate. Cultivation and reflniment seem but to enhance 
their warmth of heart and ardent enthusiasm ; and it is the 
possession of these latter qualities in a most remarkable degree, 
which renders an educated American one of the most endearing 
and most generous of friends. I never was so won upon, as 
by this class j never yielded up my full confidence and esteem 
so readily and pleasurably, as to them; never can make again, 
inhaif-a-year,somany friends for whom I seem to entertain the 
regard of half a life. 

These qualities are natural, I implicitly believe, to the whole 
people. That they are, however, sadly sapped and blighted 



312 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 

in tbcir growth among the mass; and that there are influences 
at work which endanger them still more, and give but little 
present promise of their healthy restoration; is a truth that 
ought to be told. 

It is an essential part of every national character to pique it- 
self mightily upon its faults, and to deduce tokens of its virtue 
or its wisdom from their very exaggeration. One great blemish 
in the popular mind of America, and the prolific parent of an 
innumerable brood of evils, is Universal Distrust. Yet, the 
American citizen plumes himself upon this spirit, even when he 
is sufficiently dispassionate to perceive the ruin it works; and 
will often adduce it, in spite of his own reason, as an instance 
of the great sagacity and acutcness of the people, and their su- 
perior shrewdness and independence. 

u You carry," says the stranger, " this jealousy and distrust 
into every transaction of public life. By repelling worthy men 
from your legislative assemblies, it has bred up a class of can- 
didates for the suffrage, who, in their every act, disgrace your 
Institutions; and your people's choice. It has rendered you so 
fickle, and so given to change, that your inconstancy has passed 
into a* proverb, for you no sooner set up an idol firmly, than 
you are sure to pull it down and dash it into fragments; and 
this, because directly you reward a benefactor, or a public ser- 
vant, you distrust him, merely because he is rewarded ; and 
immediately apply yourselves to find out, either that you have 
been too bountiful in your acknowledgments, or he remiss in 
his deserts. Any man who attains a high place among you, 
from the President downwards, may date his downfall from 
that moment ; for any printed lie that any notorious villain 
pens, although it militate directly against the character and 
conduct of a life, appeals at once to your distrust, and is be- 
lieved. You will strain at a gnat in the way of trustfulness and 
confidence, however fairly won and well deserved; but you 
will swallow a whole caravan of camels, if they be laden with 
unworthy doubts and mean suspicions. Is this well, think you, 
or likely to elevate the character of the governors or the go- 
verned, among you?" 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



313 



The answer is invariably the same : "There's freedom of 
opinion here, you know. Every man thinks for himself, and 
we are not to be easily overreached. That's how our people 
come to be suspicious." 

Another prominent feature is the love of " smart" dealing, 
which gilds over many a swindle and gross breach of trust ; 
many a defalcation, public and private , and enables many a knave 
to hold his head up with the best, who well deserves a halter — 
though it has not been without its retributive operation, for this 
smartness has done more in a few years to impair the public 
credit, and to cripple the public resources, than dull honesty, 
however rash, could have effected in a century. The merits of 
a broken speculation, or a bankruptcy, or of a successful scoun- 
drel, are not gauged by its or his observance of the golden rule, 
" Do as you would be done by," but are considered with re- 
ference to their smartness. 1 recollect, on both occasions of our 
passing that ill-fated Cairo on the Mississippi, remarking on the 
bad effects such gross deceits must have when they exploded, 
in generating a want of confidence abroad, and discouraging 
foreign investment : but I was given to understant that this 
was a very smart scheme by which a deal of money had been 
made : and that its smartest feature was, that they forgot these 
things abroad, in a very short time, and speculated again, as 
freely as ever. The following dialogue I have held a hundred 
times : — " Is it not a very disgraceful circumstance that such a 
man as So and So should be acquiring a large property by the 
most infamous and odious means, and notwithstanding all the 
crimes of which he has been guilty, should be tolerated and 
abetted by your Citizens? He is a public nuisance, is he not ?" 
" Yes, sir." " A convicted liar?" " Yes sir." "He has been 
kicked, and cuffed, and caned?" u Yes sir." "And he is 
utterly dishonourable, debased, and profligate?" "Yes sir." 
" In the name of wonder, then, what is his merit?' "Well, sir, 
he is a smart man." 

In like manner, all kinds of deficient and impolite usages, 
are referred to the national love of trade; though oddly enough, 
it would be a weighty charge against a foreigner, that he re- 



314 



COSCLIDING REMARKS. 



garded (he Americans as a trading people. The love of trade 
is assigned as a reason for that comfortless custom, so very pre- 
valent in country towns, of married persons living in hotels, 
having no fireside of their own, and seldom meeting from early 
morning until late at night, but at the hasty public meals. 
The love of trade is a reason why the literature of America is 
to remain for ever unprotected : " For we are atrading people, 
and don't care for poetry,*' though we c?o, by the way, profess 
to be very proud of our poets 3 while healthful amusements, 
cheerful means of recreation, and wholesome fancies, must 
fade before the stern utilitarian joys of trade. 

These three characteristics are strongly presented at every 
turn, full in the stranger's view. But the foul growth of Ame- 
rica has a more tangled root than this \ and it strikes its fibres, 
deep in its licentious Press. 

Schools may be erected, East, West, North, and South ; pu- 
pils be taught, and masters reared, by scores upon scores of 
thousands ; colleges may thrive, churches be crammed, tempe- 
rance may be diffused, and advancing knowledge in all other 
forms walk through the land with giant strides \ but while the 
newspaper press of America is in, or near, its present abject 
state, high moral improvement in that country, is hopeless. 
Year by year, it must and will go back ; year by year, the tone 
of public feeling must sink lower down; year by year, the Con- 
gress and the Senate must become of less account before all de- 
cent men ; and year by year, the memory of the Great Fathers 
of the Revolution must be outraged more and more, in the bad 
life of their degenerate child. 

Among the herd of journals which are published in the States, 
there are some, the reader scarcely need be told, of character 
and crediL From personal intercourse with accomplished 
gentlemen, connected with publications of this class, 1 have de- 
rived both pleasure and profit. But the name of these is Few, 
and of the others Legion; and the influence of the good, is 
powerless to counteract the mortal poison of the bad. 

Among the gentry of America: among the wellin-formed and 
moderate, in the learned professions; at the bar, and on the 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



315 



bench ; there is, as there can be, but one opinion, in reference 
to the vicious character of the infamous journals. It is some- 
times contended — I will not say strangely, for it is natural to seek 
excuses for such a disgrace — that their influence is not so great 
as a visitor would suppose. I must be pardoned for saying that 
there is no warrant for this plea, and that every fact and cir- 
cumstance tends directly to the opposite conclusion. 

When any man, of any grade of desert in intellect or charac- 
ter, can climb to any public distinction, no matter what, in 
America, without first grovelling down upon the earth, and 
bending the knee before this monster of depravity ; when any 
private excellence is safe from its attacks, when any social 
confidence is left unbroken by it, or any tie of social decency 
and honour is held in the least regard ; when any man in that 
Free Country has freedom of opinion, and presumes to think 
lor himself, and speak for himself, without humble reference to 
a censorship which, for its rampant ignorance and base disho- 
nesty, he utterly loathes and despises in his heart ; when those 
who most acutely feel its infamy and the reproach it casts upon 
the nation, and who most denounce it to each other, dare to set 
their heels upon, and crush it openly, in the sight of all men; 
then I will believe that its influence is lessening, and men are 
returning to their manly senses. But while that Press has its 
evil eye in every house, and its black hand in every appointment 
in the state, from a president to a postman; while, with iibald 
slander for its only stock in trade, it is the standard literature 
of an enormous class, who must find their reading in a news- 
paper, or they will not read at all ; so long must its odium be 
upon the contry's head, and so long must the evil it works, be 
plainly visible in the Republic. 

To those who arc accustomed to the leading English Journals, 
or to the respectable journals of the Continent of Europe 5 to 
those who are accustomed to anything else in print and paper; 
it would be impossible, without an amount of extract tor which 
1 have neither space nor inclination, to convey an adequate idea 
of this frightful engine in America. But if any man desire 
confirmation of my statement on (bis head, M him repair to 



316 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



any place in ibis city of London, where scattered numbers of 
these publications are to be found ; and there, let him form his 
own opinion \ 

It would be well, there can be no doubt, for the American 
people as a whole, if they loved the Real less, and the Ideal 
somewhat more. It would be well, if there were greater 
encouragement to lightness of heart and gaiety, and a wider 
cultivation of what is beautiful, without being eminently and 
directly useful. But here, I think the general remonstrance, 
"we are a new country," which is so often advanced as an 
excuse for defects which are quite unjustiOable, as being, of 
right, only the slow growth of an old one, may be very reason- 
ably urged ; and I yet hope to hear of there being some other 
national amusement in the United States, besides newspaper 
politics. 

They certainly are not a humorous people, and their temper- 
ament always impressed me as being of a dull and gloomy 
character. In shrewdness of remark, and a certain cast-iron 
quaintness, the Yankees, or people of New England, unques- 
tionably take the lead ; as they do in most other evidences of 
intelligence. But in travelling about, out of the large cities ; as 
I have remarked in former parts of this volume ; I was quite 
oppressed by the prevailing seriousness and melancholy air of 
business : which was so general and unvarying, that at every 
new town I came to, I seemed to meet the very same people 
whom I had left behind me, at the last. Such defects as are 
perceptible in the national manners, seem, to me, to be referable, 
in a great degree, to this cause : which has generated a dull, 
sullen persistance in coarse usages, and rejected the graces of 
life as undeserving of attention. There is no doubt that 
"Washington, who was always most scrupulous and exact on 
points of ceremony, perceived the tendency towards this mis- 
take, even in his time ; and did his utmost to correct it. 

(l) Or, let him refer to an able, and perfectly truthful article, in The Foreign 
Quarterly Review, published in the present month of October; to which my at- 
tention has been attracted, since these sheets have been passing through the 
press. He will find some specimens there, by no means remarkable to any man 
who has been in America, but sufficiently striking to one who has not. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



317 



I cannot hold with other writers on these subjects that the 
prevalence of various forms of dissent in America, is in any 
way attributable to the non-existence there, of an established 
church j indeed, I think the temper of the people, if it admitted 
of such an Institution being founded amongst them, would 
lead them to desert it, as a matter of course, merely because 
it u:as established. But, supposing it to exist, I doubt its pro- 
bable efficacy in summoning the wandering sheep to one great 
fold, simply because of the immense amount of dissent which 
prevails at home ; and because I do not find in America any one 
form of religion with which we in Europe, or even in Eng- 
land, are unacquainted. Dissenters resort thither in great 
numbers, as other people do, simply because it is a land of 
re-ort; and great settlements of them are founded, because 
ground can be purchased, and towns and villages reared, 
ny here there were none of the human creation before. But 
even the Shakers emigrated from England ; oar country is not 
unknown to 3Ir. Joseph Smith, the apostle of Mormonism, or 
to his benighted disciples ; I have beheld religious scenes my- 
self in some of our populous towns which can hardly be sur- 
passed by an American camp-meeting ; and I am not aware 
that any instance of superstitious imposture on the one hand, 
and superstitious credulity on the other, has had its origin in 
the United States, which we cannot more than parallel by the 
precedents of Mrs. Suuthcole, Mary Tofts the rabbit-breeder, 
or even Mr. Thorn of Canterbury ; which latter case arose, 
sometime after the dark ages had passed away. 

The Republican Institutions of America undoubtedly lead the 
people to assert their self-respect and their equality ; but a 
traveller is bound to bear those Institutions in his mind, and 
not hastily to resent the near approach of a class of strangers, 
who, at home, would keep aloof. This characteristic, when 
it was tinctured with no foolish pride, and stopped short of no 
honest service, never offended me ; and I very seldom, if ever, 
experienced its rude or unbecoming display. Once or twice it 
was comically developed, as in the following case ; but this 
w as an amusing incident, and not the rule or near it. 



318 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



I wanted a pair of boots at a certain town, for I had none to 
travel in, but those with the memorable cork soles, which 
were much too hot for the flery decks of a steam-boat. I there- 
fore sent a message to an artist in boots, importing, with my 
compliments, that I sould be happy to see him, if he would 
do me the polite favour to call. He very kindly returned 
for answer, that he would " look round" at six o'clock that 
evening. 

I was lying on the sofa, with a book and a wine-glass, at 
about (hat time, w hen the door opened, and a gentleman in a 
stiff cravat, within a year or two on either side of thirty, en- 
tered, in his hat and gloves , walked up to the looking-glass; 
arranged his hair ; took off his gloves ; slowly produced a 
measure from the uttermost depths of his coat pocket 5 and 
requested me, in a languid tone, to " unfix" my straps. I 
complied, but looked with some curiosity at his hat, which was 
still upon his head. It might have been that, or it might have 
been the heat— but he look it off. Then, he sat himself down 
on a chair opposite to me ; rested an arm on each knee ; and, 
leaning forward very much, took from the ground, by a great 
effort, the specimen of metropolitan workmanship winch I had 
just pulled off— whistling, pleasantly, as he did so He turned 
it over and over ; surveyed it with a contempt no language can 
express; and inquired if I wished him to fix me a boot like 
that? 1 courteously replied, that provided the boot9 were 
large enough, I would leave the rest to him ; that if conve- 
nient and practicable, I should not object to their bearing 
some resemblance to the model then before him 5 but that I 
would be entirely guided by, and vould beg to leave the 
whole subject to, his judgment and discretion. a You an't 
particklcr, about this scoop in the heel I suppose then?" 
says he • "We don't toiler that, here." I repeated my 
last observation. He looked at himself in the glass again; 
went closer to it to dash a grain or two of dust out of the 
corner of his eye ; and settled his cravat. All this time, my leg 
and foot were in the air. " Nearly ready, sir?" I inquired. 
"Well, pretty nigh," he said ; "keep steady." I kept as steady 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



319 



as I could , both in foot and face ; and having by this time got 
the dust out, and found his pencil-case, he measured me, and 
made the necessary notes. When he had finished, he fell into 
his old attitude, and taking up the boot again, mused for some 
time. "And this," he said, at last, " is an English boot, is it ! 
This is a London boot, eh?" ''That sir," I replied, "is a 
London boot." He mused over it again, after the manner of 
Hamlet wilh Yorick's skull; nodded his head, as who should 
say "I pity the Institutions that led to the production of this 
boot!"; rose; put up his pencil, notes, and paper — glancing 
at himself in the glass, all the time— put on his hat, drew on 
his gloves very slowly, and finally walked out. When he had 
been gone about a minute, the door reopened, and his hat and 
his head reappeared. He looked round the room, and at the 
boot again, which was still lying on the iioor; appeared thought- 
ful for a minute; and then said, "Well, good arternoon." 
"Good afternoon sir," said I; and that was the end of the 
interview. 

There is but one other head on which I wish to offer a 
remark; and that has reference to the public health. In so 
vast a country, where there are thousands of millions of acres 
of land yet unsettled and uncleared, and on every rood of 
which, vegetable decomposition is annually taking place; where 
there are so many great rivers, and such opposite varieties of 
climate , there cannot fail to be a great amount of sickness at 
certain seasons. But I may venture to say, after conversing 
with many members of the medical profession in America, that 
I am not singular in the opinion that much of the disease which 
does prevail, might be avoided, if a few common precautions 
were observed. Greater means of personal cleanliness, are 
indispensable to this end; the custom of hastily swallowing 
large quantities of animal food, three times a-day, and rushing 
back to sedentary pursuits after each meal, must be changed ; 
the gentler sex must go more wisely clad, and take more 
healthful exercise ; and in the latter clause, the males must be 
included also. Above all, in public institutions, and throughout 
the whole of every town and city, the system of ventilation, 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



and drainage, and removal of impurities, requires to be 
thoroughly revised. There is no local Legislature in America 
which may not study Mr. Chadwick's excellent Report upon 
the Sanitary Condition of our Labouring Classes, with immense 

advantage. 



I have now arrived at the close of this book. I have little 
reason to believe, from certain warnings I have had, since I 
returned to England, that it will be tenderly or favourably 
received by the American people ; and as I have written the 
Truth in relation to the mass of those who form their judgments 
and express their opinions, it will be seen that I have no desire 
to court, by any adventitious means, the popular applause. 

It is enough for me, to know, that what I have set down in 
these pages, cannot cost me a single friend on the other side of 
the Atlantic, who is, in anything, deserving of the name. For 
the rest, I put my trust, implicitly, in the spirit in which they 
have been conceived and penned ; and I can bide my time. 

I have made no reference to my reception, nor have I suf- 
fered it to influence me in what I have written ; for in either 
case, I should have offered but a sorry acknowledgment, com- 
pared with that I bear within my breast, towards those partial 
readers of my former books, across the Water, who met me 
with an open hand, and not w ith one that closed upon an iron 
muzzle. 

THE END. 



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